Best Bakeries in Richmond BC

A lot of my childhood afternoons ended with somebody handing me a bun to keep me out from underfoot, and I have been eating my way along Richmond's bakery counters ever since. That is not a qualification. It is just why I have opinions.

There are two traditions running side by side here, and most guides only cover one. There is the Hong Kong style bakery, which you find in the malls and plazas along No. 3 Road and out through Blundell and West Cambie. And there is the Steveston counter, which is closer to what my Broadmoor neighbours would have called a bakery in 1994: bread, doughnuts, cake by the slice. Both are good. They are good at completely different things, and knowing which one you want is most of the skill.

If you have never used a Hong Kong style bakery

Here is the whole system. You take a tray from the stack at the door, you take the tongs, and you walk the shelves putting what you want on the tray yourself. Nobody serves you. At the till they bag it and box the fragile things. That is it.

Two things I wish somebody had told me earlier. First, the shelves are restocked in batches through the day rather than all at once in the morning, so if a tray looks picked over it is worth asking when the next one comes out. The answer is usually a specific time and usually correct. Second, buns go stale faster than you expect because most of them are soft-crumbed and enriched. Buy for today. If you are buying for tomorrow, buy the denser things.

The ones I go back to

Kam Do Bakery, Parker Place

This is my first stop and has been for years. Parker Place is the older of the No. 3 Road malls and the Kam Do counter there is busy in a way that tells you the turnover is high, which for a bakery is the only quality signal that really matters. Egg tarts and the everyday buns are what I go for. It is not a place to linger. You get in, you fill a tray, you leave, and you eat in the car park like everyone else.

Saint Germain Bakery, Aberdeen Centre

The Aberdeen location is the one I use because Aberdeen is where I already am, and because you can get there off the Canada Line without dealing with the parkade at all. Broad range, reliable, and a shade more polished than Kam Do. It is the one I take people to when they have never done this before, because the layout is easy to read and nothing on the shelf is going to surprise anybody badly.

Maxim's Bakery

Maxim's is the one I have the most history with and the least drama about. Consistent, wide selection, and strong on the things you buy in quantity for other people rather than for yourself. If I am bringing something to a family thing and I do not want opinions about it, I go to Maxim's.

New Town Bakery

Steamed buns are the reason. That is a different craft than the baked-goods shelf and I rate this one for it specifically. If you have only ever eaten baked buns, a good steamed one is a genuinely different food and worth the detour on the Brighouse side.

Garden City Bakery and The Boss Bakery

Both sit in the Blundell end of the city and both are neighbourhood bakeries in the true sense, meaning most of the people in them live within a kilometre. This is where I would send somebody who is tired of the mall version and wants a counter with a queue of regulars at it. I use them roughly interchangeably, which is a mild insult to both, but that is the honest truth of how they sit in my week.

Cakes, which are their own problem

Anna's Cake House is where I have ordered birthday cakes from, and it is what I would recommend for the light, less-sweet style of cake that most of my family actually prefers over a dense western buttercream. Two notes. Order ahead for anything with writing on it or any specific size, because walking in on a Saturday afternoon expecting a custom cake is optimistic. And be clear about how sweet you want it, because the default here is restrained and if you are used to grocery store frosting you may find it plain.

Maple Castella over in West Cambie sits in a different category again. Castella is that tall, jiggly, barely-sweet sponge that comes out of the oven in a slab and is sold warm. It does not keep. Eat it the same day, ideally within the hour, and do not buy it as a gift for tomorrow.

Steveston, the other tradition

Steveston Bakery is my default because it is four blocks from my door and because it does the ordinary things properly. Bread, the case at the front, coffee that is fine. On a summer weekend there is a line out onto Moncton by mid-morning, so I go early or I go on a Tuesday.

Diplomat Bakery is the other Steveston stop and leans to the European end. I use it when I want something richer than a plain morning bun. Both of these are close enough together that you can look in one window and then the other before deciding, which I do more often than I would like to admit.

Practical notes that will save you a trip

Weekend mid-morning is the worst possible time at every bakery in this article, in both halves of the city. Between eight and nine is better. Late afternoon can be excellent because some counters mark down what is left, though nobody advertises this and it is not something you can plan around.

Bring a bit of cash. Most places take cards now, but the small counters occasionally have a machine that is having a day, and there is usually a minimum on card at the smaller shops.

Parking is the whole difficulty on the No. 3 Road side. The mall parkades have their own time limits and validation rules and they change, so read the sign rather than trusting what a friend told you. Or take the Canada Line to Aberdeen or Brighouse and skip the entire question, which is what I do when I am only buying for myself.

What I have left out

Plenty. There are a dozen more bakeries in this city that deserve a paragraph and there are three or four I have been to exactly once, which is not enough to have an opinion. I have also not been into a couple of the older Blundell counters in months, so I am not going to describe what is on their shelves today.

If you only do one thing off this list, take a tray at Parker Place and fill it without a plan. Egg tart, one savoury bun, one thing you cannot identify. That is the correct introduction to how this city eats, and it costs less than a sandwich.