Lil' Ronnie's Beachside BBQ — Restaurant in Tofino

Lil’ Ronnie’s Beachside BBQ is quite a place to have food in Tofino. The location of the BBQ is right beside Mackenzie Beach, and a quick two-minute walk from it is Mackenzie Beach.

The restaurant has live music during certain hours of the day, with local artists coming by and singing for a few hours during the dinner time service. It’s very nice to have live local music performing, which makes the restaurant feel like a close community where everyone can laugh and sing. Besides the performance hours, it’s a pretty quiet place, which isn’t bad if you enjoy a peaceful meal.

As for the food, I’ll be very transparent and say it wasn’t terrible, but neither was it amazing. It was in between okay and good. Decided to order the Bonanza, which is $35 per person. It’s a Chef's Choice Assortment of Daily Meats (3) and Sides (3). You don’t know what you’ll get until the food arrives, which is nice as it’s a surprise. I ended up getting the brisket, ribs, and turkey breast. Along with the sides came coleslaw and cowboy beans, and I upgraded on the mac and cheese.

The goods of the food—the brisket was phenomenal, I must say—super tender and melts right into your mouth, with a very strong smoky flavour to accompany it. I adored it. As for the turkey breast, it’s really challenging to always make turkey not dry, but this place made the juiciest turkey breast, which made it delicious to eat and made me want more.

Now for the bad Unfortunately, I wasn’t very satisfied with the meal overall. For the price I paid with a friend, it ended up being $80 with taxes, and I was really disappointed. The ribs for starters were tasty, but there was no meat on them. It was eating a bone with skin on it, and that’s it. I was expecting much more meat on a rib, but I was super disappointed with that. As for all the sides, the least favourite part of the meal. The mac and cheese had no sauce whatsoever. Pretty much, it was overcooked noodles with what looked like an attempt at sauce and what seemed like crushed Doritos. I was not happy with that, especially since I paid extra for it. The slaw itself would’ve been much better if it wasn’t drenched in vinegar. My nostrils were burning from the amount that was in it, and my face wanted to get sucked in from the copious amounts that were drenched in there, leaving sloping coleslaw. As for the cowboy beans, I felt like I was eating cement. It was not very flavorful and was just mushy, unfortunately.

And the last thing I will say about this place is portion sizes. Nothing was on the plate—two slices of brisket, three meatless ribs, three slices of turkey breast—along with little bowls of sides for $80 in total for two people. I was really disappointed since I paid that much at any other BBQ place and they brought out plates of quality food. To me, this felt like a waste of my money, and I ended up having to eat somewhere else.

Overall 2.5/5

With the lack of food there was for the price I paid for and some decent service, which is not really much to talk about since service was okay and just okay, my personal opinion would be to find another place within Tofino to eat unless you get the protein via 1 lb and spend tons of money on it. The only thing that saved this place was the local artist and the brisket and turkey breast being amazing; otherwise, the rest of it was not worth it taste-wise, visually, portion-wise, and for the price you’re paying, you can go to another restaurant and get better food. Overall, it's a real shame, as I’ve heard many good things about Lil’ Ronnie’s BBQ, but it ultimately led to...

Cannot recommend. What little food we got tasted good, but the pricing is stratospherically insane. I know, I know, everything is expensive in Tofino. That's fine, but you should at least get decent portions, which is not the case here.

While the flavour of the food was decent overall, the exorbitant prices for small portions meant that the food we were looking forward to for days as we planned our trip to Tofino led to our experience falling very, very, short.

We got the Platter, which offers you 3 of the meats they make, plus 3 sides, for 35 dollars per person, at minimum 2 people. The meat you get is the chef's choice, which means it'll be brisket for sure, then pulled pork and sausage or ribs.

For our 70 dollars, we got 1 slice of brisket (not each, just a single slice of brisket total), 2 side ribs (again, total not per person) and a scoop of pulled pork. For 70 dollars. This is the most expensive BBQ I've ever had in my life, and I love BBQ, so this isnt my first rodeo. The amount of disappointment we felt when they brought the platter was massive, but we tried to soldier on.

They also included some little side dishes like pickled onions, sauteed onions, and regular pickles, and a metric ton of different sauces on the plate, which is nice. The actual sides were okay, a bright spot being the homemade baked beans.

We also ordered brisket burnt ends, which came covered in a bunch of sauces and pickled onion and pickles. For 15 bucks, we got 3 small cubes of meat! Shocking. This did not taste at all like any brisket burnt end I've eaten at a restaurant or smoked myself, and it looked and tasted like pot roast under the sauces. Maybe they ran out of brisket point for the burnt ends, and did up chuck roast burnt ends instead. If so, they should let customers know in advance.

We ordered a child size order of mac and cheese for our toddler, and it came covered in dorito dust that unfortunately made it too spicy, inedible for our child. Thinking this was an oversight, we asked if they normally make kid's mac and cheese without the spicy dust, and were informed that's how they make it. We were able to get a hot dog bun just so we had something for him to eat. Imagine our surprise when they brought the bill and we were charged 3.00 for the bun, on top of the 8.00 for the mac and cheese he couldn't eat.

Interestingly, there was live music, so we were also charged a 10.00 per head cover charge for a local pair of musicians, which is certainly a new experience for a non concert/bar venue for me as well. Not that the musicians were bad, and it was fun, just the thought of ponying up 150 plus for a meal for two plus a 20.00 cover charge at a BBQ joint is outlandish, and should have been a red flag at the get go. Memphis Blues BBQ in Kelowna has had free live music every time I've been there, for example.

Also, there is no bathroom, as the bathroom in the nearby general store closes around 6pm.

Luckily, these are all issues that can be fixed, so hopefully they can be addressed, thus helping their customers leave with happier experiences...

SCAM - AVOID this place. Plenty of much nicer places to eat in Tofino. We ordered the ‘bonanza’ for 2 for $70 expecting to get a good amount of food - a bonanza. We only got 2 x 1/2lbs of lukewarm meat and 1 1/2 sausages plus 3 sides which we didn’t really want but went for the bonanza as we thought it would be a good deal! It would have cost less to order these separately and we could have ordered more of what we actually wanted. I politely raised this with the server Charlie who turns out to be the manager. His response? “It’s only a dollar”!!! He didn’t get it at all and was pretty rude telling me not to be bothered over a dollar. That’s not the point, it’s the principle that I paid more money for food I didn’t really want under the guise that it was a good deal. No resolution or understanding at all. A completely unprofessional response. On top of this the gas heaters were not working and there is only outside seating so it was freezing cold. I would strongly urge you to find somewhere else to eat.

Edited to add - I think the owner’s response says it all. Offering to refund me the one dollar but completely missing the point. The resolution offered was, after I had raised the point, been told “it’s only a dollar”, paid the bill anyway as I wasn’t getting anywhere, and was about to leave, when he offered a free drink which I had already paid for. I think YOU as the owner need to look into the menu and pricing as I am sure I’m not the only one that thinks this ‘bonanza’ is a rip off when customers are getting less than what they pay for disguised as a deal - the $1 is...