Beacon Drive In

Address: 126 Douglas St
Phone: (250) 385-7521
Price: $4 ice cream cone, $10 burger combo
Notes: Victoria's last remaining drive in with the best ice cream in town!



The Beacon Drive In is kind of a Victoria landmark. Located near the water and Beacon Hill Park it's the perfect place to stop while doing some excellent wandering on a sunny day. It's been the perfect meet up place with friends countless times, and it's almost always busy.

They are well known for their soft serve - creamy and buttery and probably horrible for you. Lately they also serve it with optional "flavour burst" (your choice of flavour on the edges) which kind of distracts from the overall creaminess of it. However, they also do amazing "ball park" style burger and lots of deep-fried choices. They're kind of like a deluxe concession stand, really.


Service
April 24, 2011
For a place with long lines every time I visit, there was a fair bit of chatting and standing around being done by staff. Perhaps someone was just in-between tasks, but it seemed a bit strange to not designate more staff to one area and less to another to help keep the line moving.


March 19, 2011
The service is definitely take-out, and thus not exactly finessed. Their goal is to get through the line as fast as possible, in fact we found ourselves ordering through others while they paid at the take out window. A bit weird, but given the volume they must go through and the turn around time you can't complain too loudly.

Food
April 24, 2011

Screaming Cheesebuger via foodspotting.com

This burger was gross squared. Basically, they just took a regular cheeseburger and slathered some frank's red hot on to either side of the bun. This had the sorry effect of rendering every other flavour in the burger completely tasteless. Even the onions, but especially the cheese. A great name, a terrible burger. 

Onion Rings via foodspotting.com

Onion rings are really my junk food of choice, and these didn't disappoint! I like to pretend they are healthier than french fries, as there are vegetables inside (shhhhh!) You could taste the saturated fats soaked into the batter, and the crisp outside gave way to a soft, warm onion inside.


March 19, 2011
Today we had butter pecan ice cream cones, which was the draw, but my partner-in-food-and-life also ordered a corn dog.  I do love their ice cream cones... the "regular" size is pretty much giant, anything larger would be ridiculous! Our dog got most of my PIFAL's cone... she approved as well. The corn dog was less than fantastic. The batter was nice - sweet, crispy outside and not gooey inside, but the hot dog was significantly lacking so the balance just wasn't there.