1511 Anderson Street
Granville Island
Vancouver, BC V6H 3S2
(604) 683-7127

Whenever I decide to make a trip to Vancouver and plan on hitting Granville Island, a stop at Tony’s Fish & Oyster Café is moreorless going to be required. To enjoy the best of what this little stop offers does require the foreknowledge of busing in instead of driving (parking is a nightmare), and enjoying the time here with friends.

Supposedly, this diner is well known as a tourist trap. With it being the first food establishment anyone can spot while entering the inlet stop, that is no surprise. During the busy lunch hour, waiting in line can be long, but Carson Upton (co-organizer of Gottacon) and I arrived at a lucky time where we got our seats right away.

This little island mecca of the arts and food scene (it was once a place for heavy industry) has plenty of shops to sate the appetite of many, and in what I found, it meant finding some really tasty squid. It was quite delectable. Unlike other places where this particular type of seafood can be easily coated heavily, this place lightly breads this particular product. In Carson’s meal, I noticed it was much more thicker with good reason. On fish, a good crispy batter is everything.

The meal also included octopus and a small crispy salad too. Had the coleslaw been bigger, this Deep Fried Calamari Platter ($12.95) would have been the ideal lunch. I thought that the daily special was good but it needed a better balance between grease and garnish.

However, I should have ordered rice pilaf instead of fries. I didn’t find them worth raving about and they were not all that satisfactory. I found some pieces tough as stone, and that does not bode very well. I had food left on the plate! I even left the cocktail sauce alone too. It did not have that je ne sais quoi about ‘em, and if I wanted to bathe my meal in any red, that would have to be saved for Evil Dead: The Musical that I saw later.

Yes, going to see the play version of Sam Raimi’s flic, whenever it hits the Pacific Northwest, is going to be a regular ritual for me.

3½ blokes out of 5