Golden Village and Aberdeen Centre: A Guide to Richmond's Asian Malls

Parker Place had a food court where I did homework before I was tall enough to see over the counter. The Golden Village is not a destination to me. It is where I buy soy sauce and get my hair cut. That is the register I am going to write this in, because the thing people get wrong about Richmond BC most often is treating this part of the city as an outing rather than as somewhere a lot of us simply live.

What the Golden Village actually is

It is the stretch of No. 3 Road running roughly from Cambie Road at the north end down to Granville Avenue at the south, plus the side streets hanging off it. Four malls anchor it: Aberdeen Centre, Yaohan Centre, Parker Place and Lansdowne. Add Richmond Centre at the bottom and Alexandra Road running east off No. 3, and that is the whole map. You can walk it. Most people do not, because No. 3 Road is six lanes of traffic and the distances look shorter than they are, but Aberdeen down to Lansdowne is about twenty minutes on foot.

Density is the point. There are more restaurants in these few blocks than in most Canadian downtowns, and they are not laid out for browsing. They are stacked in plazas, on second floors, behind other restaurants, down in parking levels. If you only eat at the places with street frontage, you will eat worse than you should.

Getting there

Take the Canada Line. I mean this seriously. Aberdeen station puts you at the mall door, Lansdowne station is across the road from Lansdowne, and Brighouse at the end of the line sits beside Richmond Centre. From downtown Vancouver it is about twenty-five minutes and you skip the parking question entirely.

If you drive, Aberdeen has a large parkade, which fills anyway. On weekend afternoons the ramps back up. My habit is to go straight to the top level and park where nobody wants to walk from, or to leave the car at Yaohan and walk north. Alexandra Road is the genuinely hard one, because the restaurants outnumber the stalls by a wide margin. On a Friday night I park in the blocks behind it and walk in.

Aberdeen Centre

Aberdeen is the one people mean when they talk about Richmond's malls. Big glass atrium, a fountain that puts on a show, three floors, a Daiso that will take forty minutes and twenty dollars off you, and a food court upstairs that is one of the better ones in the region.

Two things I would actually send you for. Saint Germain Bakery, for a tray-and-tongs run: pineapple buns, coconut buns, sponge cake, the sausage rolls. Take the tray, take the tongs, do not overthink it, and buy one more than you meant to, because the shelves thin out badly by late afternoon. Then Fisherman's Terrace Seafood Restaurant upstairs for dim sum. I have never once walked in at noon on a weekend without waiting, so either arrive at eleven or accept the wait and be pleasant about it. Har gow and siu mai are the baseline you judge everything else by. If there are pea shoot dumplings on, order them.

One practical warning. The malls here do not keep the hours you might expect them to, and I have driven over to Aberdeen after work and found the shutters down. Check before you make a trip for one specific thing.

Yaohan Centre and Parker Place

Yaohan, a few blocks south, is smaller and more useful. The supermarket inside it is where I do a real grocery shop when I want decent fish and a full wall of soy sauces, and the food court is old-fashioned in the best way: laminated photo menus, plastic trays, six or seven counters, and no interest whatsoever in being redesigned. The Japanese and Taiwanese counters are the strong ones. Get there at 11:30 and you will get a table.

Parker Place is my favourite of the four and the least photographed. It is a warren of small stalls rather than proper storefronts, which gets you dried goods, herbal shops, phone repair, a jade counter, somebody who will fix your watch, and a food court that the people who work in the area actually eat in. The Kam Do Bakery branch in Parker Place is where I stop for an egg tart and a milk tea when I am killing twenty minutes, and the tarts are best when you have timed it right and a fresh tray has just landed.

Lansdowne, Richmond Centre, and a caution

Both of these have been living under redevelopment plans for years, and what is trading inside them changes. Lansdowne has been on a long slow shift from mall to construction project, and Richmond Centre has been rebuilt in stages. I am not going to tell you what is open this month, because it will be wrong by the time you read this. If you are going for one particular shop, look it up first. If you are going to wander, wander at Aberdeen or Parker Place instead.

Alexandra Road

Three blocks running east off No. 3 Road, and by restaurant count the densest eating strip in Richmond. Hot pot, Sichuan, Japanese, Korean, dessert cafes, barbecue, most of it in strip-mall units with narrow frontages and signs that tell you nothing. Liuyishou Hotpot Richmond is where I go when there are six of us and the entire point of the evening is sitting around a pot for three hours. Snowy Village Dessert Cafe is the shaved-milk-ice place I end up at afterwards in July. Matcha Cafe Maiko does the soft serve my sister makes me stop for every single time, without fail, even when we have just eaten.

The way to use Alexandra Road is to accept that you cannot judge these rooms from the sidewalk. Look at who is inside and what time it is. A full room at nine on a Tuesday tells you more than any sign ever will.

Two that are not in a mall

HK B.B.Q Master is tucked into the parking level of a supermarket plaza on No. 3 Road, and it is one of the very few places in this city I will queue for without complaining. Roast duck, char siu, soy chicken, cut to order in front of you. Go early, because when the good stuff is gone it is gone, and I keep cash on me for it out of habit. Chef Tony Seafood Restaurant is the opposite proposition: the dim sum room you book ahead for when there is something to celebrate, and plated like it. Both are correct answers to completely different questions.

For everyday eating, Deer Garden Signatures is the one I give people who say they do not know where to start. Beef brisket noodle soup, rice rolls, and nothing on the menu designed to intimidate anybody.

Something sweet on the way out

If you catch the smell of Uncle Tetsu's Japanese Cheesecake somewhere in the Golden Village, follow it. That is a whole cake, warm, and in my experience it does not survive the drive home in any recognisable condition. I have stopped pretending otherwise.

How to do a first visit without wrecking it

• Come hungry, but plan for three small things rather than one large meal. Variety is the whole point.
• Weekday lunch is the sweet spot. Weekend noon is the worst hour of the week.
• Take the Canada Line and walk between two malls. Do not attempt all four in a day.
• Carry some cash. Most counters take cards now, but a few of the best ones have made me glad I did not assume.
• If a food court counter has a lineup of people who are obviously on their lunch break, join it.

People ask me which mall is the good one. They do different jobs. Aberdeen is where you take someone. Parker Place is where you go alone on a Wednesday. Yaohan is where you buy groceries and eat standing up.

The Golden Village rewards repetition rather than a single visit, which is an awkward thing to tell somebody planning a day out. So come twice. The second time you will stop looking at the malls and start looking at what is inside them, and that is the point where this neighbourhood starts making sense.