Two Greater Victoria restaurants are finalists in Air Canada’s Best New Restaurants list for 2025.
Rabbit Rabbit in Victoria and Janevca in Esquimalt made the list created by a national panel of journalists, chefs and culinary storytellers that aims showcase the country’s best “Food Worth Flying For.”
Restaurants that opened between May 1 through April 30 are eligible.
Janevca in Esquimalt’s turreted Rosemead House was dubbed a “full-fledged dandyism’” by nominators.
Founder Lenny Moy restored the English inn into a velvet-and-timber reverie, with antiques collected abroad. The leaves of the dining room’s replica Japanese maple change seasonally and a Douglas fir from the grounds was milled into tables.
Fire defines chef Andrea Alridge’s cooking, her Filipino and Jamaican heritage voiced in family-style dishes – charcoal-oil Castelvetrano olives and Hokkaido scallop crudo with pyanggang sauce lead to Haida Gwaii halibut. Pastry chef Brian Bradley’s Peach Melba “is a trompe l’oeil.”
READ MORE: 467 wines from 15 countries coming to Victoria International Wine Festival
Rabbit Rabbit, tucked into a heritage Victoria storefront on Herald Street, “is a dream in maroon and puce, low light pooling across mosaic tile and the sweep of a bar.”
Owner Sydney Cooper’s wine list is a booklet of small producers bearing her own notes and she curates cocktails like a shimmering sangria, a blend of skin-contact wine and Japanese plum wine.
The food, under Chef Billy Nguyen includes Filet-o-Fish bao on the afternoon menu, lasagna layered with gochujang bolognese and miso brown butter tomato sauce at night.
The top 10 will be announced Nov. 17 at enroute.aircanada.com/best-new-restaurants.
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Nanaimo and Vancouver Hullo ferry customers can now bring bikes on board