The alley’s so narrow that only a rumor of sun reaches past the two-story warehouses that frame it. Along the lane, oddment shops sell phonograph records, herbal tinctures, bead necklaces, antique handiworks. You can reach your hands to each side of the passageway and brush the old brick walls.

When you step out into the sunny street you’re in Chinatown. Wood-box stands offer piled bundles of daikon (a white radish of Japan), ginger, dried cuttlefish and bok choy. Blue Pacific sky paints the horizon. Cantonese phrases clatter like marbles rolled against each other. “Dim sum lunch every day,” promises a sign above the entrance to Don Mee’s.

It’s early afternoon in Victoria, B.C., dim sum is our goal, and Don Mee’s is reputedly the best in town. Loosely translated as “little treats,” dim sum are indeed that, small plates of dumplings and other delights from which, given a half-dozen, two diners can make a lunch that practically demands a postprandial nap.

Up the stairs we stride — lollygagging is not wise if you want a table at a dim sum shrine — to enter an elegant hubbub of serious gustation. Green walls, brass trim and porcelain adornments temper the clack of platters and chopsticks, the familial ebb and flow of conversation.

Abigail’s is a deluxe, neo-Tudor inn located just a few blocks from the waterfront.

We start with shrimp dumplings, the hamburgers of dim sum, and venture onward to taro rolls, spiced wide noodles, shrimp-and-crab cakes. It’s the best dim sum lunch I’ve had since my last trip to Hong Kong, and it reminds me why Victoria is such a wonderfully diverse and culturally flavorful place to visit.

Yes, that Victoria. Capital of British Columbia, Canada. Former outpost of the British Empire. Perched around one of the world’s best harbors at the southeastern tip of Vancouver Island, the largest island on the western side of North America. Home of neo-English parliament buildings (called so even though it’s the B.C. Legislature that uses them) and afternoon tea ceremonies in quaint Victorian parlors.

Though the notion is far from reality, the city still hasn’t shed its Beefeater-and-lace public persona. You can blame Rudyard Kipling for this.

It was Kipling who, after visiting Victoria around 1908, when he was probably the world’s most famous English writer, called it a Little Bit of Old England. “Amongst all the beautiful places in the world, and I think I have seen the most beautiful of them, Victoria ranks the highest,” he gushed. Woe betides those who have an identity stuck on them by a global celebrity!

Although it has a dozen other equally valid (and more genuine) personalities and the city stopped marketing its quasi-Brit character a decade ago, most visitors still come to town expecting scones and jam on doily-clad silver salvers.

But there’s plenty to be said for old Empire sensibilities. At Abigail’s, a marvelously deluxe neo-Tudor inn that’s just a few blocks from the waterfront, the two honeymoon suites include dumbwaiters from which couples can extract their breakfasts without joining the relatively refined hurly-burly of breakfast in the first-floor parlor. Yes, you get scones at breakfast. You can also have cider-and-gouda scalloped potatoes and breakfast lasagna.

Some of Victoria’s other identities:

Progressive culinary capital: Not only is it a dining mecca (with more restaurants per capita than any other city in Canada, supposedly), it’s one of the world’s centers for slow food, the term that embraces production and enjoyment of local, sustainable agriculture, fisheries and cooking. The Vancouver Island Chefs Collaborative was formed a decade ago by innovative restaurateurs to create a market for regional foodstuffs.