So, my first trip to Vancouver – and on the first day right after I got checked into my hotel, I found myself wanting seafood! Calgary doesn’t offer anything great since we’re not near the ocean, and the front desk agent recommended us to Steveston which really wasn’t far away at all! We parked our car and took a walk towards the wharf and saw a restaurant called Shady Island Seafood Bar & Grill. How bad can it be? There was guests in the restaurant constantly at the odd hour we were there… so, we walked in for a try! Right at the door, it advertised Award Winning Seafood Chowder, so I knew I was going to get a bowl of soup!
This wasn’t really a meal and more like a huge sampling snack! So, the first thing we ordered was Mama’s Seafood Chowder which was really delicious actually! It was creamy with quite a few chunks of seafood in the chowder!
Then, we also had some BC Crab Happy Cakes which was a plate of crab cakes with a roasted red pepper aioli and tartar sauce to dip in. The crab cakes weren’t the best I have ever had, nor were they the worst. They were decent, but they were filled with lots of crab meat inside – without too much binding agent.
Our main was the Seafood Melt which was a patty made with baby shrimp & crab with mayo on foccacia – then topped with mozzarella and probably put in the broiler to melt the cheese. It came with a huge bed of fries on the side – which we never finished. Out of the entire meal, and if I had to pick something I didn’t like the most – it would probably be this main. It didn’t taste like there was enough taste to it and it was rather dry.
To our main dish, we shared a side dish, the Lobster Morsels which was lobsters and scallops on a cast iron plate – so it was sizzling! This dish had more of an Asian flair to it as it was seasoned with basically ginger and soy sauce.
My overall experience was decent. The place was a little dark, but it was a gloomy day. The bathrooms were on the upstairs, and it was a tad creepy. The food was quite good, so we left quite satisfied! We definitely can’t get anything like this back home, so we got nothing to complain about!
Shady Island Seafood Bar and Grill
#112 – 3800 Bayview Street
Richmond, BC V7E5W3
(604) 275-6587
Steveston