The Victor: Dine Out 2020
Dine Out Vancouver is a food festival with over 200 participating restaurants. These participating restaurants offer 3-course menus at different price points: $15/$25/$35/$45. Itโs a fun way to try different restaurants in Vancouver that you may not normally go to.
The first Dine Out I tried was The Victor, a fancy steakhouse located inside Parq, a casino in downtown Vancouver.
Dine Out menu
The Victorโs Dine Out 2020 $45 dinner menu is as follows (you choose one of the following for each category):
| Appetizers | Entrees | Desserts |
| Lobster & crab bisque | Centre cut delmonico ribeye, 8oz | Menkes cake |
| Caesar salad | Free range half chicken | Valrhona dark chocolate tart |
| Mango chili roll | Foraged mushroom & truffle risotto | |
| Steak tartare | Braised shortrib | |
| Jumbo prawn cocktail (+$12) | Hokkaido scallops (+$18) | |
| Foie gras (+$12) | Petite filet (+$18) |
Interior of The Victor
It is a nice walk to the restaurant if you park at Parq casino and walk past their fountains outside. You get a nice shot of BC place (or is that Roger’s arena?).
The Victor’s interior is very fancy and nice. We are seated outside but they have heat lamps and a waterproof tent wall. It’s nice to see their patio area still being used in the winter time. We felt no discomfort semi-outside and enjoyed the lights.
Appetizers
Most of us chose the steak tartare as our appetizer. My parents chose the lobster & crab bisque.
Bread (free)
Sorry about this photo lol I forgot I had to blog this. They offer complimentary bread and butter and we basically scarf it down. The bread is a cheesy bread with some baked cheese at the top so we really enjoy that. It is fresh and warm when it arrives at our table – no complaints!
Steak tartare
Cute and interesting plating for the steak tartare. There are 4 compliments on the board – egg yolk, egg white, the smallest pickles I have ever seen and some horseradish. I personally really liked the horseradish garnish.
The steak tartare is not a big portion, but it is a reasonable amount. The meat itself is mixed with grainy mustard, capers, horseradish and quick cured egg yolk.
I am happy they give me a lot of chips to accompany the raw meat, as one of my biggest pet peeves is when they give you like 3 little crackers and you have to smother all your tartare onto them.
Lobster & crab bisque
The lobster & crab bisque starts off as an empty bowl with a crab salad in the middle. It is one of those fancy soups where they pour it in from a jug. They also provide gruyere toast for the soup.
My mom finds the soup too salty. I taste it and it has a very strong lobster and crab flavour and smell. It is very rich and thick and I do find it a tad too salty.
We tell our server this and he offers my mom to switch to the caesar salad instead.
Caesar salad
My mom gets her caesar salad, which looks decent. They use romaine lettuce and shaved brussels sprouts, pecorino cheese, and sprinkle crispy sumac spiced chickpeas on top.
My mom accepts the caesar salad but doesn’t find it especially delicious.
Entrees
Almost all of us choose the ribeye as our entree because this is a steakhouse so it doesn’t make sense not to order a steak, right?
Centre cut delmonico ribeye, 8oz
I have my steak done medium-rare. It comes with whipped potatoes and some roasted veggies.
I am no steak expert but I can say it is not a perfect medium-rare solely on the evidence that it is so hard to cut. They changed our cutlery after the appetizers so I am using a steak knife, but it is just so difficult to cut a bite-sized piece of my steak. It is not a melt-in-your-mouth, falls-off-your-fork type of steak.
The whipped potatoes are delicious and so are the 2 roasted carrots on my plate. They also have a roasted green pepper which is too spicy for me.
Braised shortrib
My sister orders the braised shortrib. It comes with creamy polenta and green beans.
The shortrib is soft and easy to eat. It is braised well and has a savoury sauce that is not too overwhelming – a classic braised shortrib. The portion size is bigger than we expect and my sister has a hard time finishing it all – but she finishes it!
Desserts
All of us except my father orders the dark chocolate tart.
Valrhona dark chocolate tart
So this “tart” is huge. It is a huge cupcake looking thing. At the bottom they have brownie brittle, which is hard like a burnt cookie. On top, they have chocolate mousse and whipped cream with some more pieces of dark chocolate and edible gold sprinkled.
I’m not a big chocolate fan but I do enjoy this dessert. I like the chocolate brittle at the bottom. The chocolate mousse is not cold but it feels a little hard, which I am ok with.
In general, this dessert is rich and for chocolate lovers. I am not able to finish the entire dessert.
Menkes cake
The menkes cake is a vanilla sponge cake with toasted coconut custard and mousse in between the layers.
Like the chocolate tart, the slice of cake is quite big but my father happily finishes it all. It has a lighter taste and is not as rich as the chocolate dessert.
Final thoughts
I chose The Victor for Dine Out mostly because of my father. He had a stroke last year and thus is on a very strict diet. This means he cannot eat deep fried foods, fat-heavy foods, etc. Continuing on, he does not like raw food so sushi is not an option. He is also lactose-intolerant so Italian cuisine with lots of cheese is also not an option.
Another reason I chose The Victor is because I looked at the Dine Out menu and I thought “this is value”. If you order a steak on a normal day, it already costs $45+ so there definitely is value in trying their Dine Out menu.
The steak tartare and lobster bisque are both good choices for appetizers as they add more value. The steak tartare on its own is already $20 from their regular menu (at a bigger serving size, I assume). Unfortunately, the soup was too salty for my parents and even a tad bit too much for me.
I was disappointed in the steak because I feel like I’ve had better steak at different steakhouses and steaks should be what they are known for.
Still, I think The Victor’s Dine out menu offers great value. Their portion sizes are reasonable to large and they offer great service and ambiance to their diners.
Sincerely, Loewe