Where Locals Actually Eat in Richmond BC

I want to deal with the phrase in the title first, because it usually means something dishonest. When people write about where locals eat, they mean hidden gems, and there is nothing hidden about any of this. Everybody in Richmond knows about Alexandra Road. The reason these places do not show up on the lists that visitors read is not secrecy. It is that they are in strip malls with bad signage and no patio, and they photograph poorly.

That is the actual local knowledge. Not a secret address. Just the willingness to walk into a room with fluorescent lighting and a laminated menu and order the thing the menu is clearly built around.

Alexandra Road is not a secret, it is just hard to park at

Alexandra Road runs a short stretch parallel to Alderbridge, a walk from Aberdeen station, and it holds a density of restaurants that I have not seen anywhere else in the country. People call it Food Street. The turnover is real, so some of what was there two years ago is gone, and something else has opened in the same room with the same tables.

Here is how I use it. I do not drive there at seven on a Friday. The lots behind those buildings are small and shared between six businesses each, and you will spend twenty minutes circling for a spot that a delivery driver is about to take. Weekday, mid-afternoon, or take the train and walk. That single change makes the street pleasant instead of a fight.

The other rule is to go with a plan for one dish rather than a plan for a restaurant. These kitchens are usually narrow specialists. The room that does lamb soup properly is not the room that does noodles properly, and the menu will tell you which one you are in if you read the first two sections rather than the whole thing.

The specialists I actually go back to

Shine Valley Lamb Soup is exactly what the name says, and I rate it highly in cold weather, which in Richmond means most of the stretch between November and March. It is a single-idea restaurant. Go for the single idea.

A Bite of Shunde covers a regional Cantonese style that is quieter and more delicate than what most people expect from Cantonese food, and that alone makes it worth a visit if you have only ever eaten the banquet version. Chef Tian's and Memory Corner Restaurant sit in the same general orbit of small Golden Village rooms doing regional cooking well, and I rotate between them depending on which one has a table.

Shanghai Taste is where I take out-of-town family, and I will admit it is the least obscure thing on this list. Soup dumplings are the reason. There is usually a wait. Eat the first one carefully or you will burn yourself, which I still do about once a year.

Tsim Chai Noodles is my standby for a fast bowl on the City Centre side when I am between errands. Wonton and noodle soup, in and out in half an hour, no ceremony.

Deer Garden Signatures is the one I use for the sort of meal you eat alone at three in the afternoon because you skipped lunch. Rice plates, soup, straightforward.

HK B.B.Q Master deserves its own sentence for the setting alone. It is tucked into a supermarket parking lot rather than a storefront, which is the most Richmond thing I can tell you about a restaurant. Roast meats are the point. It is small, it is busy, and takeaway is a completely legitimate way to use it.

The parts of the food scene people forget

Richmond is not only Cantonese and not only Chinese, and the strip malls hold that too. Silkway Halal Cuisine does northwestern Chinese cooking, hand-pulled noodles and lamb, which is a different tradition again and one that has grown noticeably here in the last decade. Banh Mi Tres Bon out in West Cambie is my sandwich answer, and a good banh mi is one of the few genuinely cheap lunches left in this city.

These are the ones that get skipped when somebody writes about Richmond as a dim sum destination. The city is more varied than that, and the varied part is mostly in the plazas.

Food courts, which are underrated and I will die on this hill

The mall food courts here are not the food courts you are picturing. Aberdeen Centre's upper level, the court at Yaohan, the one at Parker Place: these are rows of small independent operators, not chains, and several of them are the only location that operator has. The economics of a food court stall are brutal, which means the ones that survive are usually doing one thing well.

How to use them. Walk the entire loop before you commit, because the first stall you see is not the best one. Look for a queue of people who look like they have done this before. And go at an off hour, because at noon on a Saturday you will not find a table and you will end up eating standing up near a pillar.

The Richmond Public Market food court on the Buswell side has changed shape several times since my parents had their produce stall there in the nineties, so I am careful about describing it as it was. Go and look. That building is still one of the more interesting rooms in the city.

Practical notes

Cash still matters at the smallest places, and card minimums are common. I keep twenty dollars in the car for exactly this.

Tea usually arrives without you asking and is not a menu item at the small Cantonese rooms. Reservations mostly do not exist. If a place is full, you write your name on a clipboard or you wait outside, and pretending you are on a list will not help.

Hours on these places are genuinely volatile, and the closing time posted online is often wrong by an hour in either direction. Kitchens also close well before the room does. If you are making a special trip for one dish, phone rather than trust a listing, including mine.

Last thing, and it is the one I mean most. Restaurants in these plazas open and close on a fast cycle. If you walk up to a room that is dark, do not treat the trip as wasted. There are eleven more within two hundred metres, and one of them opened last month. That churn is the reason the food here stays good, and it is also the reason no list, including this one, stays accurate for long.