Best Sushi in Richmond BC

Here is the honest version. Richmond is not a sushi city the way it is a dim sum city. It has a great deal of sushi, most of it competent and fairly interchangeable, spread through strip malls from Ironwood up to Bridgeport, and a small number of rooms that are worth giving an evening to. Anybody telling you the city is a sushi destination is selling you something. What Richmond does have is a working fishing harbour at one end, and that turns out to matter more than the ranking does.

What I look at

Rice before fish. If the rice is fridge-cold, or wet, or barely seasoned, nothing sitting on top of it is going to rescue the meal, and the cheapest test of a counter is one piece of nigiri before you commit to a set.

Then focus. A kitchen doing eight things well beats one printing a laminated menu of two hundred items with a photograph of each. Then honesty. A neighbourhood counter turning out fried rolls for a Tuesday dinner is a perfectly good thing and I eat at them regularly. It is simply not the same purchase as a proper dinner, and the places that pretend otherwise are the ones that disappoint you.

The two rooms I book

Ichiro Japanese Restaurant

Second Avenue in Steveston, a couple of blocks back from the water and easy to walk straight past. It is quiet, and it is the sort of room I would check the hours on before wandering over rather than after. Phone ahead rather than assuming a booking app exists. There is parking behind the building, which in Steveston on a summer weekend is worth more than anything else I could say about it. This is my pick for an actual sit-down dinner.

Toku Japanese Restaurant

Lansdowne, on the No. 3 Road side and a short walk from Lansdowne Station. What makes Toku useful is where it sits, in the middle of a stretch of the city where nearly every other option is Chinese, in a comfortable room that does not rush you out. Sushi rolls, sashimi and a set of cooked plates. It is what I choose when the day has turned into a mall day and nobody wants to get back in the car.

When you want Japanese and not sushi

This is where Richmond is stronger, and I would rather send you to a very good bowl of something than a middling plate of raw fish.

Yuu Japanese Tapas, in Continental Centre on Sexsmith, is a small dim izakaya doing ramen, okonomiyaki and shareable plates. It is tight and loud and I like it for exactly that. G-Men at Steveston Ramen Shop, on Bayview, does rich broth bowls and gyoza, and it is one of the easier places in the village to arrive at the wrong hour, so check before you walk down. Lines build there on cold wet afternoons, which is of course when you most want it. And Oretachi Japanese Curry, on No. 1 Road, makes an Osaka-style curry off a long spice list with katsu breaded and fried when you order it. None of that is a sushi answer. It is frequently the better dinner.

Reading a strip-mall sushi counter in ten seconds

Richmond has dozens of these and most of them are fine. The tell is the display case. If it is stacked with pre-made rolls under film at half past six, you are eating something that was built at two in the afternoon. If the rolls go together after you order, that is a different kitchen even when the room looks identical.

Look at the lunch trade as well. A counter full of people from the surrounding offices at noon is turning its fish over, and turnover is close to the whole game with raw food. A counter that is empty at noon and empty again at seven is not a bargain, whatever the price on the board says.

I should also admit a limit here. A couple of the counters along No. 3 Road that I used to like have changed hands since I last ate at them, and I am not going to rank places from memory. If a name you expected is missing, that is usually the reason.

The advantage nobody uses

Steveston has a working harbour, and when the boats are in you can buy fish straight off them down at the wharf at the foot of Third Avenue. Spot prawns in season, salmon, sometimes tuna. I am not going to tell you to take that home and make nigiri, because handling raw fish safely is its own skill and the freezing rules exist for good reasons. But it does change how I think about spending money on seafood here.

Which is the advice sitting underneath this whole article. If you have sixty dollars and you want to eat fish in Richmond, a plate of local halibut or black cod in a room over the harbour will beat a mediocre sushi set most nights of the week. Catch Kitchen and Bar is upstairs on the Bayview pier with windows over the boats, and Blue Canoe Waterfront Restaurant sits one floor below it doing simpler seafood and chowder. Both are West Coast rather than Japanese. Both are what I would actually book.

Practical bits

Steveston parking on a summer weekend is genuinely bad. Park up around Chatham or Second and walk down. The village is small and you will spend less time on foot than you would circling. In City Centre, take the Canada Line and skip the parkade entirely. Phone reservations still matter at the older rooms, so do not assume a booking app exists. And if you want a Japanese-leaning dessert on the way home from the Golden Village, the Uncle Tetsu's Japanese Cheesecake counter at Aberdeen is worth the detour, and I have walked out of there with one still warm.

Where I would send you

A proper dinner for two, booked ahead: Ichiro. A weekday lunch or an afternoon in the middle of the city: Toku. A cold night when what you want is a bowl: G-Men, or Yuu if you want plates and a drink and some noise. And if what you actually wanted was good local fish, skip the sushi question altogether and go sit over the water.