10 Acre Commons’ happyhour ain’t great

Lady-lord, what does one say?  I had read this article and been annoyed because it didn’t have a date on it and the vibe was suspiciously pre-covid.  A buck-a-shuck deal? In Victoria?

Naturally, instead of calling to asking whether they still did that, I got excited about the version of reality where they did still do that, and dragged my gf to 10 Acre Commons on Humboldt street in Downtown Victoria.

For starters, we found 2 hour free parking in James Bay.  Having not checked, I of course thought that happyhour started at 3pm as per the post I read.  Not so!

Got that everyone? 10 Acre Commons’ happyhour starts at 2pm. That weird website is out of date.

Immediately I decided to stick to the $5 sleeves (not $4, boo) because the oysters were not $1 each but instead half price, which means you can get six (which they will insist on calling a half-dozen) for $9 plus tax.

Naturally my gf got some kind of bite-size chicken–the $14 happyhour wings.  This review is mostly about the wings.

Begin the gallery of horrors:

That’s whole, unbitten.  These ones were on the bottom.

I mean, mea culpa, the place is apparently farm-to-table?  So like, these chickens died nearby, to be this meatless.  Ethicality win?

Given the piles of A tier wings we had the other day at that weird grocery store bar this felt nuts.  That was $7.50 a pound. This was $14 as a happyhour price and they lowkey sucked.

Moving on, after two sleeves of beer because my budget had been $10 (recklessly expecting a $4 beer and pay-per-unit $1 oysters), I decided I could spare ten more dollars to see what the oysters were like–again, this is because I’m reckless.

Now, in my varied and wide experience eating fresh shucked oysters from coast to coast of this great land mass called Turtle Island, there are two general categories they can fall into tastewise: fresh and briny, or milky and cummy.  These were not the former.  They wanted a more authoritative sauce array, I guess you have to pack in your own Tabasco etc.

They did, however, stain my mouth with the taste of good oysters, and I got considerable mileage out of it actually, intermittently smacking my mouth to sample it like I was trying wine, a maneuver my girlfriend found satisfyingly revolting.

Ultimately, I would never go back.  I was tempted by the thought of various sins against the establishment.