The Top 29 Places to Eat Near Cafe Malabar
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Rank 1. Cafe Malabar
Keralan
- Air Canada 2024 · Top 10 · Best New Restaurants
- Vancouver Magazine 2026 · Bronze Medal · Restaurant Awards: Best Victoria
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Rank 2. Ugly Duckling
Chinese
- Air Canada 2023 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants
- Vancouver Magazine 2025 · Honourable Mention · Restaurant Awards: Best Victoria
- Vancouver Magazine 2026 · Honourable Mention · Restaurant Awards: Best Victoria
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- Air Canada 2025 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants
- Vancouver Magazine 2026 · Silver Medal · Restaurant Awards: Best Victoria
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Rank 4. Marilena
Sushi
Lingcod Bourguignon, with bacon and pearl onions, is about as far from a typical sushi menu as you can get, which tells you something about what the kitchen is up to here. Marilena is a fine dining raw bar where the nigiri and sashimi lean on sustainable local seafood and the rest of the menu keeps the same restless energy. Vancouver Magazine gave it the gold for Best Victoria restaurant, which tracks.
- Air Canada 2023 · Top 10 · Best New Restaurants
- Vancouver Magazine 2026 · Gold Medal · Restaurant Awards: Best Victoria
- Vancouver Magazine 2025 · Gold Medal · Restaurant Awards: Best Victoria
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Rank 6. end dive
Seafood Dive Bar
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- Air Canada 2018 · Top 10 · Best New Restaurants
- Vancouver Magazine 2025 · Silver Medal · Restaurant Awards: Best Victoria
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Rank 11. Cafe Brio
Italian
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Rank 18. Ursa Minor
Regional New American
- Seattle Met The Best Restaurants in Washington State
- James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific · Nick Coffey
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Rank 19. Setsunai Noodle Bar
Noodles
A noodle bar tucked into a Lopez Island alleyway, where the chef makes his own ramen and udon and also, apparently, throws his own ceramics, which explains why the bowls are so good-looking. The broth is rich and deeply savory, the eggs are that soft jammy orange that makes everything look intentional. Reserve ahead: the handful of outdoor counter seats and high-tops fill up even when the ferry crossing feels like a bad idea.
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Eastsound, on Orcas Island, is not where you expect to find a restaurant that landed on the New York Times's restaurant list, but here we are. Matia Kitchen (say "may-shah") is a small, ingredient-driven restaurant where local produce gets the kind of careful treatment that earned a James Beard nomination. The menu shifts with the season, and the cooking has a quiet confidence that the room itself, unpretentious as it is, seems entirely unbothered by.
- James Beard Awards 2024 · Nominee · Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific · Avery Adams
- The New York Times The Restaurant List
- Seattle Met The Best Restaurants in Washington State
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Rank 25. Pilgrimme
Seasonal New American
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Rank 26. Goldie’s and The Roost
Creative Pizza
A pizza spot in two stacks: a casual counter downstairs and an adults-only dining room up top, both turning out wildly creative pies built on heirloom Red Russian wheat milled by nearby sixth-generation farmers. The meat pizza somehow reads as a vegetable dish, with kale, squash, and Moroccan-spiced toum doing the heavy lifting and bacon playing backup. Upstairs pastas are quietly serious. The soundtrack on any given night might go from '90s hip-hop to something resembling the Inspector Gadget theme.
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Rank 27. Finistère
French
Housemade mafaldine with duck confit in a town that sometimes feels like a preserved-in-amber dollhouse: Finistère has a restrained Scandinavian dining room with rotating local art that quietly refuses to play along with Port Townsend's Victorian theatrics. The kitchen leans into Pacific Northwest sourcing, local oysters and albacore alongside proper pasta, and the whole thing moves with a calm confidence that comes from cooking at Per Se and Canlis before decamping to the peninsula.
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