Coastal Cafe on BC Ferries

Address: Various BC Ferries ships
Price: ~$10
Notes: not as bad as it used to be. not as good as the buffet.



The BC Ferries had such a reputation for the longest time about their terrible, terrible food. They have tried to turn it around by switching up menu options and adding a fancy-schmancy buffet. The buffet is awesome - expensive, but awesome.


Service
February 5, 2011
It must be really annoying to work here. Giant line ups that get held up by unexpected kitchen delays. People are traveling and thus more likely to be grumpy than average. Still, it's rare to find a grumpy staff person. Clearly those unionized wages are doing their job. They at least know they have to fake it.

Food
February 5, 2011 
I was lucky enough to have not one, but two meals at the coastal cafe!

For breakfast, I opted for the waffle-sausage-bacon-scrambled eggs. I think it was called the BC breakfast? It was surprisingly good. The waffles were kind of yummy. No wannawafel, but not a dense pile of raw-batter-at-the-centter either. (High praise, I know!). The bacon was pretty good, and the sausages were only mildly flavoured with the weirdness I don't love. The eggs needed more pepper, but that's just personal preference really.

For dinner, I opted for the "BC" (bacon cheddar) burger with sweet potato fries. The burgers are supposed to be White Spot burgers... or at least, they used to be. I'm actually not sure they've still got the branding deal, although they're pretty much the same. I canvassed my coworkers for their reactions to their dinners (burgers and teriyaki noodle boxes) and they were not so flattering... "uninspiring" - "salty" - "soggy" - "over priced" - "i'm going to pick around the noodles and just eat the veggie and meat bits." My burger was decent although I was pretty much starving as I hadn't eaten since the previously mentioned breakfast. The sweet potato fries were not good. I don't think they were deep fried long enough to get properly crispy, or perhaps they were over cooked before the deep frying. Either way, the texture was all wrong. I didn't even finish them all.

If it wasn't quite so expensive, I wouldn't really have a problem, but by the time you total everything up you might as well hit the buffet if you have even a few extra dollars in your pocket.