Wild Blue Restaurant + Bar: Seafood Restaurant in Whistler
We go to Whistler several times a year to snowboard and always stay in the Whistler village. Over time, we’ve gotten to try quite a few Whistler restaurants so I was excited to see a new restaurant open last year.
Wild Blue Restaurant is a new fine-dining seafood restaurant located in Whistler village by the golf club. We recently visited to try them for the first time back in February, but I did make reservations back in December. Our experience was kind of particular due to a free steak incident, which I will expand more on in this post 😬.
The vibe
Upon first entering, I got speakeasy vibes. The door looked like a submarine door and once inside, it is very dark (no windows). They have a lot of dim and warm lighting, and a very pretty lit up bar on the side. The restaurant itself is pretty spacious and there were a lot of tables fitted into the layout of the dining room.
Once finally seated, I was pretty pleased with the table. It was spacious for 4 people and the blue velvet coach/seating was very comfortable (but I preferred having a pillow for some lower back support).
Food and drinks review
Here is everything we ordered for 2-4 people. Prices are in CAD and rounded to the nearest dollar for simplicity.
Two-tier seafood tower ($146)
For starters, the 4 of us shared the two-tier seafood tower. They have 3 levels (one-tier, two-tier, and three-tier). The two-tier one comes with 12 oysters, prawns, clams, mussels, some hamachi and albacore tuna tataki. For sauces, it comes with cocktail sauce, green chili granita and mignonette.
As a first impression, I think this seafood tower is pricey for the amount of seafood on it, but I do have to say the quality was very high. The oysters were sweet and juicy and the prawns were very fresh 👌! I just am not sure the few pieces of hamachi and the albacore tuna tataki are worth the extra $62 price difference between one-tier and two-tier, but it also comes with a few more oysters, clams and mussels to make it easier to share between 4 people.
Risotto ($30)
We are 2 couples and we decided to order 2 mid-course pastas to share between the 4 of us.
The first pasta we ordered was the risotto, which comes with smoked sablefish, kelp, and some Parmigiano Reggiano.
As a mid-course, I felt the portion was decent. The risotto was tasty even though I couldn’t really notice the flavour of the smoked sablefish specifically (thought it would be more smoky). But overall, a nicely made risotto.
House-made linguine ($36)
For the second pasta, we got the house-made linguine. This pasta features geoduck and littleneck clams, basil and chilies.
I felt this pasta was very unique and also delicious 😍! I have never seen geoduck used in a pasta before and I felt the usage of it kept its nice simple and clean flavours. The clams were also a good pairing. The pasta wasn’t overly saucy or overwhelming and it had a very good balance.
Ribeye – 14oz ($98)
For our main entrée, we decided to share 1 steak between each couple (so 2 steaks in total for the table).
We chose the ribeye (certified Angus beef from Albera) because it is 14oz! This is a pretty big steak as I can barely finish a 6oz steak on my own, so I thought it would be perfect to share between the 2 of us and then we can save some room for dessert.
For steak, you can choose to have it prepared in 3 different ways – béarnaise sauce or madeira jus or yakiniku Sauce. We asked the server which sauce is most popular and she told us it was the béarnaise sauce, so we ordered it with the béarnaise sauce. The other couple at our table ordered the same ribeye but in the yakinuku sauce.
Out of the 2, I think I did prefer the béarnaise sauce over the yakinuku sauce, which was more thick and BBQ/smoky (and they pre-cut up the steak for you).
The steaks were cooked perfectly and super delicious!
Final thoughts
Service – awkward situation
If you’ve been reading this blog post so far, you will get a sense that we have been enjoying the food so far at Wild Blue. If I base this review just on the food, I would give it 4-5 stars, but unfortunately something really awkward happened between our table and the service team.
I don’t know if it was because it was pretty loud in the restaurant, but our server misheard us when we ordered the steaks. She thought we ordered 1 steak each between my partner and I, so when the main dishes arrived, my partner and I both received a 14oz ribeye. However for the other couple we were dining with, they were also sharing a 14oz ribeye and they only received one order.
When the 3 steaks arrived, we immediately told the busser/other server that we only ordered 1 ribeye to share. The busser then told us “Oh, then the second one will be free.”
We were surprised to hear this but we were not upset (because hey free steak right 🤷🏻♀️?), so we placed the 3rd steak in the middle of the table thinking the 4 of us could share this extra steak that appeared.
A few minutes later, our main server came back and asked what happened. I explained to her that there was some sort of mix-up and we actually only ordered 1 steak to share between 2 people, so the 3rd steak should not be here. She then said, “Ok, I’ll just take this then” and took away the steak that we were told would be free.
This felt kind of weird to us as we were given 2 different information by the 2 servers, but we actually felt better this way because now we can still have room for dessert.
A few minutes after that, our main server comes back with the 3rd steak and says, “Actually, the kitchen says you guys can have it for free.”
So again, the steak is back at our table so we start to eat it. But we do notice the awkwardness of the situation and we couldn’t help but feel like our server was not happy with what had just happened 😥. Our main server was always very polite and never said anything unpleasant to us directly, but it was just an awkward/tense vibe we received from her. I hope she didn’t think I was trying to scam/get a free steak because that was not the situation (the other couple also ordered a 14oz steak to share and they just got 1). I was so full I couldn’t order the sticky toffee dessert I wanted to try 😭!
So this was really awkward and uncomfortable for me personally. I also found some practices a little non-transparent in terms of pricing. For example, the steaks came with potatoes but both the menu and our server never informed us there would be an additional +$5 surcharge if you want your potatoes mashed or in truffle fries. We were also offered “bread for the table”, but when asked if it was free, we were told there was a charge.
I understand that fine-dining restaurants want to cater to a specific crowd and this crowd likely doesn’t care about $5 surcharges or $10 bread. I don’t think I am a particularly wealthy person, but my partner and I do spend a lot on dining out regularly ($300+ for the 2 of us for 1 meal is not uncommon for us), but I still prefer and value knowing these additional charges just because of transparency.
And thinking more about this, I think a part of the awkwardness/tense vibe between us and our server was that we felt like she wasn’t that happy to serve us possibly because we were not as high-paying as maybe other tables.
In total, our bill came to around $500 after tax and tip for 4 people and no drinks/alcohol. We tipped higher than usual because we got a free steak, but I wouldn’t say we were super pleased with the service.
Due to this awkward situation we experienced, I will give Wild Blue 3 stars.
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️