World Famous Fish & Chips

Top Quality Local Ingredients

Barb's World Famous Meals
Serving Victoria's Best Fish & Chips for over 35 years!
House-made Signature Recipes
Barb's chowders, dips, dressings, burgers & cakes are made with love in our prep kitchen daily.
Locally Sourced Ingredients
Fresh Pacific seafood and produce is our speciality.
100% Canadian Raised Beef
As exceptional as the land on which it is raised, Canadian beef is excellence without compromise.
Real Canadian Cheddar Cheese
Great Cheese = Great Burgers! Canada produces some of the best cheddar in the world.

39 Years of Iconic Fish & Chips!

Barb’s Fish & Chips is floating in Victoria BC’s Inner Harbour at the vibrant Fisherman’s Wharf. Enjoy watching all the activity – fishing, sail, charter and house boats, seals playing in the harbour, sea planes taking off and landing – as you sit at open-air picnic tables eating Barb’s tender-crisp pieces of halibut, cod or sockeye salmon and fries.

Barb’s Fish & Chips Seafood Restaurant opened in 1984 and we have continued to grow and expand ever since. Word of mouth and positive community support have helped make us a landmark in Victoria, being voted #1 ‘Best Fish and Chips’ for the past 37 years.

We pride ourselves in serving quality, freshly made food. All our burgers, chowder, dips, dressings, carrot cakes and famous chocolate chunk cookies are made in our Prep kitchen and brought daily to the restaurant. And our friendly crew is the best!

Barb’s has also had the honor of being a film set for the series, “Sea Hunt”, as well as being featured on the TV Food Network, mentioned in the novel “Deep Sting” and a Harlequin Romance novel entitled “Wild Passage”, in addition to numerous newspaper articles and such travel guides as “Best of the Pacific Northwest” and “Lonely Planet”. Barb’s was also rated by Sunset Magazine as one of the “Top 10 Seafood Spots by the Sea in North America”

Whether you are a tourist or a Victoria resident looking for a great meal and an excursion that is out of the ordinary, make it Barb’s Fish & Chips at Fisherman’s Wharf. We look forward to serving you soon!

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The Beginning

Barb was brave and against all odds on a special day in 1984, with a 100lb bag of potatoes she made the first order of Fish & Chips. She sold out all portions in one day... early fans remember that the tastiest tartar sauce in town was served from a coffee mug on the counter, one mug would last most of the day. 39 years later we serve over 30L of Barb's house-made tartar sauce daily and it's still as tasty as ever!

History in the Making

2001 - 2016 was a second chapter in the Barb's story. We pride ourselves in serving quality, freshly made food. All our burgers, chowder, dips, dressings, carrot cakes and famous chocolate chunk cookies are made in our Prep kitchen and brought daily to the restaurant. And our friendly crew is the best!

The Future of Fish & Chips

Now it was time for a few changes at the restaurant where thousands flock every summer to enjoy the famous fish and chips while hanging out on the docks at Fisherman’s Wharf. Ian had three objectives: to decrease the congestion surrounding the restaurant, to improve working conditions for the staff, and to provide a better experience for customers.

To meet these objectives, Ian needed an architect who understood how to combine the love of the sea with the needs of a restaurant. That’s where Ben, an architect who felt at home in the bright colours of the buildings at Fisherman’s Wharf, became involved in the project. Ian understood the funkiness that would attract the potential customer along with the need to get those fish and chips into the mouths of the hungry public as quickly as possible.

The "New" Barb's Story

Fresh

Pacific Halibut

Halibut has always been a choice eating fish due to its delicious firm white meat, and is often the premier fish at gourmet restaurants.

Halibut is the largest member of the flounder family and can sometimes reach 40 years of age and weigh in excess of 500 pounds. These fish are found in the waters of the Northern Pacific Ocean. In the West, they are found from the Sea of Japan and north throughout the Bering Sea. In the eastern Pacific, this species ranges from the Gulf of Alaska southward toward Santa Barbara, California.

At Barb’s Place, we source our Halibut directly from BC’s West Coast fishermen who fish the waters from Alaska to California. We buy fresh whole fish and filet it in our kitchen into beautiful white and flakey quarter-pound servings.

Wild Pacific Sockeye Salmon

Wild salmon from British Columbia is one of the most spectacular seafood products in the world. The care, attention, and experience with which BC wild salmon is harvested and processed makes it the first choice of the world’s salmon markets.

BC wild salmon have lived in the cool, pristine Pacific Northwest waters for centuries. Today not only is wild salmon an integral part of British Columbia’s wild and natural environment, it also plays a significant historical and traditional role in the lives of all British Columbians and has defined Canadian cuisine.

Barb’s Seafood Restaurant is proud to serve this delicious, extraordinary wild fish to our customers.

Pacific Cod

Pacific Cod is lean and white with a sweet, delicate taste which flakes tenderly when cooked. Our team loves that Pacific Cod has a higher moisture content than Atlantic cod, which gives it a slightly bouncier texture when cooked, more like lobster when perfectly prepared.

Like many other species of wild-caught white fish, Pacific cod is a lean, low-calorie source of protein. A 6-ounce serving contains only 100 calories, as well as a modest amount of essential nutrients, making it an overall good choice for a healthy diet.

Fanny Bay Oysters

Oysters are a favorite of food lovers worldwide and can be eaten raw or cooked. However they are prepared, oysters are popular for their delicate, nutty flavour and briny tang.

Oysters are edible, bivalve shellfish having an irregularly shaped shell. Like fish, shellfish contributes to good health, providing essential vitamins and minerals. Oysters are low in calories and saturated fats, contain omega-3 fatty acids and are excellent sources of protein.
Native Oysters are found in Washington State and British Columbia at about the three-foot tide level, usually where some fresh water comes into the salt water.

At Barb’s we serve fresh local oysters from the world-famous Fanny Bay on Vancouver Island. We have yet to find a pearl in our oysters, but they do make a jewel of a meal!

Mussels

The blue mussel is the most common variety found and harvested from along the wild BC Pacific coast. Mussels have a rich, buttery taste that makes them considered a delicacy the world over.

This species’ shell is dark blue and its meat ranges from creamy-tan to brownish-orange in colour, with a texture that is denser than that of a clam or oyster. They are loaded with minerals, are high in protein and low in fat, and are a great source of heart-healthy Omega-3 fatty acids.

At Barb’s we serve our mussels steamed to perfection, offering succulent, rich and sweet meats that are plump and tender.

Clams

Happy as a Clam... clams are a shellfish found along the seashore on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. They can be eaten raw, steamed, baked or fried – depending mainly on their size and variety – or can be made into a very popular thick soup called chowder.

Manila clams were inadvertently introduced to B.C. in the 1930s with imported Japanese oyster seed. They quickly spread throughout the Strait of Georgia from Ladysmith Harbour, and north from Barkley Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island. They currently range from the central coast of B.C. to California. Butter clams and Littleneck clams, both native to the Pacific Northwest, are small clams with translucent meat that ranges in colour from cream to golden.

The texture of our clams is firm and resilient and the flavour is both sweet and briny.

Seafood Chowder

If you want a real treat try our home-made Seafood Chowder. This isn’t just clam chowder with a few potatoes thrown in, it is a real meal in a bowl. Delicious fresh pieces of halibut; salmon; smoked salmon; clams; mussels; freshly chopped vegetables; seasoning and all in a cream base and served with garlic toast. This chowder is always a crowd pleaser and has been our staple dish for over a decade.

Hamburger Patties

Our hamburger patties are truly home-made. We take fine cuts of beef and turn them into ground beef with our own blend of seasonings. They're 1/3 lb. house-made 100% Canadian chuck beef pattys with no fillers.

We char-grill them to perfection and add, depending on the burger, real Canadian cheddar cheese; Canadian bacon; sautéed onions; sautéed mushrooms; tomatoes & lettuce. There is nothing in our burgers that we don’t prepare from the best ingredients. Try one, and find out for yourself how delicious they are.