The Blue Crab Bar & Grill Mothers Day Brunch Buffet, 146 Kingston Street, Victoria B.C - - (250) 480-1999 - - www.bluecrab.ca

Editors Note: This is Angelo Alaimo's first review with the buffet blog. You will get to read more of his reviews in the coming months!

Hello everyone, and welcome to my first contribution to the Victoria Buffet Blog. As you can see below, my brother has been actively documenting and critiquing various buffet offerings in Victoria and surrounding area. As he is away in Ontario, and I am surprisingly out here for the summer months, I offered my help in keeping the Blog active through September.

My first Victoria buffet trip took me to The Blue Crab Bar and Grill for their special Sunday brunch buffet. This buffet occurs only thrice per year and my sister and I decided to treat our mother for Mother’s Day. The buffet is also held for Easter and Christmas.


The restaurant itself is located on Victoria’s Inner Harbour inside the Coast Victoria Harbourside Hotel. The restaurant has an excellent view of passing ships and out-going/in-coming de-Havilland float planes.


The buffet offered a wide variety of pasta salads, typical breakfast dishes, fresh fruit (so fresh it deserves bold and underlining), breakfast pastries, an assortment of cheese, and an excellent dessert bar. Special dishes included freshly shucked oysters (shucked right at the bar), and roast beef. Although I can’t comment on every single dish, my personal highlights are as follows.

From the breakfast selection, the eggs benedict is phenomenal, and the bacon perfectly cooked. Also offered, were ready-made omelets, French toast, and chicken skewers. Even though the omelets were ready made, the kitchen staff prepared one fresh at our request for one in our company who is lactose-intolerant. The potatoes were, in my opinion, the only dish that did disappoint. I like to have my potatoes crispy (or at least somewhat crispy), not soft, and unfortunately, the blue crab potatoes were of the latter form.


I also enjoyed the variety of cheeses, coupled with slices of fresh French baguette. I find most restaurants only offer cheaper cheeses in their offerings such as cheddar or mozzarella. Not the Blue Crab, as they provided a wide assortment including, but not limited to, Brie, Blue and Havarti. Coupled with fresh thin slices of tasty French Baguette, one could easily fill up precious stomach real estate.


As mentioned above, the fruit was very fresh and very tasty. It was excellent for dessert along side chocolate mousse cake and a powdered sugar coated cookie. There were much, much more desserts offered, but at this point, I was too full to sample them all, let alone more than two.


Drinks were included in the price and included coffee, tea, fresh juice, and milk.

At $44.95 a head for adults, this is possibly the most expensive buffet that I will ever review. Although the food was excellent and the selection put true meaning to “something for everyone”, I did not feel it was worth this amount, and unfortunately takes a hit in the points for this reason. My mother did thoroughly enjoy the meal, and I was happy to pay for the special day; however, it’s the last time I let my sister make the reservation.

4.2/5

EDIT: I failed to mention the lack of signage at the buffet. I don't understand why, but there were absolutely no signs anywhere to show what each dish was. Even some of the cheapest buffets I have eaten at have had signs, even if they were just scraps of paper with engrish scrawled across. If the staff at the Blue Crab do read this, please put signs out for your future buffet specials!