Restaurant in Victoria, Canada
Victoria's serious seafood restaurant, finally.
Victoria's most serious modern seafood restaurant, Marilena earned C100B's 2024 Best New Restaurant award by running two strong menus simultaneously: a Pacific-focused raw bar under Sushi Chef Ilhan Yu and a technically confident main kitchen led by Kristian Eligh. The Toptable-backed room is large, polished, and built for occasions. Book easily; order across both menus.
If you've already been to Marilena once, you already know the answer: go back. Victoria has wanted a serious modern seafood restaurant for years, and Marilena — backed by Vancouver's Toptable Group and voted C100B's 2024 Best New Restaurant — delivers on that premise with enough culinary depth to reward repeat visits. The raw bar and main kitchen run parallel programs, and the smarter move on a return visit is to work across both rather than committing to one side of the menu. Book a table, not a philosophy.
Walk through the rotating door at 1525 Douglas St and the room reads immediately: back-lit art, dramatic overhead lighting, plush banquettes, and a bar wall stacked floor to ceiling with bottles. It's a Toptable signature , the same visual vocabulary you'll recognise from Bluewater Café, CinCin, and Elisa in Vancouver. That's not a criticism. The format works: large, polished, and expensive-looking without tipping into stuffy. For a special-occasion dinner in Victoria, the room alone does a lot of the heavy lifting.
Marilena's real point of difference is how two serious culinary talents share the same dining room without the menus feeling disjointed. At the raw bar, Sushi Chef Ilhan Yu (previously at Miku in Vancouver) focuses on local Pacific harvest , spot prawn nigiri, albacore, and halibut belly finished with Northern Divine Caviar. These are not token sushi items padded out with California rolls; the sourcing is specific and the execution precise. On the kitchen side, Executive Chef Kristian Eligh (previously at Hawksworth) anchors the menu in coastal BC ingredients treated with considerable technical confidence. A kampachi crudo with Meyer lemon, extra virgin olive oil, and chili is a strong opener , acidic, clean, and well-balanced. The striped bass with yu choy, maitake mushrooms, and house-made XO sauce demonstrates the kitchen's range: the plate looks direct but delivers umami complexity that takes multiple bites to fully read. This is the dish to order if you're only ordering one main. The menu is wide , perhaps wider than it needs to be , but the detail doesn't slip. That's the more important point. Vast menus at this price tier usually involve compromise somewhere; here, both the nigiri and the composed plates hold their standard. If you're returning, use that knowledge: start with a crudo and two or three pieces of nigiri from Yu's counter, then move to a main from Eligh's kitchen. That sequencing gives you a cleaner read on what Marilena actually does well, which is quite a lot. For context on how this level of seafood ambition compares nationally, [Alo in Toronto](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/alo-toronto-restaurant) and [Tanière³ in Quebec City](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/tanire-qubec-city-restaurant) operate in a similar tier of culinary seriousness, though with tasting menu formats rather than à la carte range. [Le Bernardin in New York City](https://www.joinpearl.co/restaurants/le-bernardin) remains the reference point for modern seafood at the highest register; Marilena isn't competing there, but it's the right direction of travel for coastal Canada.
The wine program is taken seriously , the cellar is ambitious relative to what Victoria typically supports , and service is slick without being performative. For a room this size, the floor team holds the standard well. If wine matters to you, ask for help; the list rewards it.
| Venue | Cuisine | Price | Awards | Booking Difficulty | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MARILENA | Marilena was intended to give coastal Victoria the grand modern seafood restaurant that it’s theoretically entitled to. Mission accomplished — the restaurant fired on all cylinders from the beginning (and, in the process, was voted C100B’s 2024 best new restaurant). Push through its well-polished rotating door and you will clock the resemblance to other restaurants in Vancouver-based Toptable Group’s stable (Bluewater Café, CinCin, Elisa, etc.) In short, the space is large and looks expensive — back-lit art, dramatic lighting, plush banquettes and, behind the bar, a vast wall of glinting bottles. But it’s culinary ambition that makes this place interesting. That job gets done, thanks to Sushi Chef Ilhan Yu (ex-Miku), whom you’ll find at the raw bar, and to the exceptionally talented Kristian Eligh (ex-Hawksworth), in the main kitchen. Their combined menus are vast, but not at the expense of detail. The nigiri excels with local harvest (say, spot prawn, albacore and an exquisite, mildly chewy halibut belly topped with Northern Divine Caviar). From the main kitchen, start with a crudo — perhaps kampachi with Meyer lemon, EVOO and chili. Crispy-skinned striped bass with wilted yu choy, maitake and house-made XO sauce is a masterclass in seafood cookery — ostensibly simple, but umami-rich and texturally complex. Service is slick and the wine cellar as ambitious as the rest of the program. | Easy | — | ||
| Red Fish Blue Fish | Unknown | — | |||
| Nautical Nellies | Unknown | — | |||
| Cafe Brio | Unknown | — | |||
| Chicken 649 | Unknown | — | |||
| Floyd's Diner | Unknown | — |
What to weigh when choosing between MARILENA and alternatives.
Marilena is a large, polished room backed by Toptable Group (the Vancouver hospitality group behind Bluewater Café and CinCin), and it won C100B's 2024 best new restaurant award — so expectations are calibrated correctly going in. The dual-kitchen format is the thing to understand: Sushi Chef Ilhan Yu runs the raw bar, Kristian Eligh runs the main kitchen, and they operate as a coherent whole rather than two separate menus awkwardly sharing a room. Order across both sides.
The room is designed to impress — back-lit art, dramatic lighting, plush banquettes — and the clientele tends to dress accordingly. A step above casual is the right call: think dinner-out clothes rather than anything you'd wear to a waterfront patio. It's not a jacket-required situation, but showing up in shorts would feel out of place.
Start at the raw bar: nigiri built on local harvest (spot prawn, albacore, halibut belly with Northern Divine Caviar) is where Sushi Chef Ilhan Yu's Miku training shows. From the main kitchen, the kampachi crudo and the crispy-skinned striped bass with XO sauce represent Kristian Eligh's range well. Don't skip the wine program — the cellar is more ambitious than Victoria typically supports.
Yes — the room is designed for it, and the service is slick without being stiff. The combination of a serious raw bar, main kitchen cooking at a high level, and an ambitious wine list gives a group something to work through together, which makes it better for a celebratory dinner than a quick meal. C100B's 2024 best new restaurant recognition means the kitchen is delivering consistently, not just on opening momentum.
Cafe Brio is the comparison for a polished, ingredient-led dinner in Victoria if you want something smaller and more intimate. Red Fish Blue Fish is the casual seafood alternative — great value, no comparison on format or finish. Nautical Nellies covers the waterfront seafood category at a more accessible price point but operates in a different tier of ambition. Marilena sits above all of them on cooking seriousness.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
