Fast Food & Takeout
A Vietnamese counter off McClelland Road baking its own baguettes for banh mi, with pho simmered from beef bones, ginger and toasted onion. Sandwiches are made to order and cheap; the pho and French pastries make it worth sitting down for.
A banh mi is only as good as its bread, which is why the shops baking their own are worth going out of the way for. This Vietnamese counter off McClelland Road bakes its baguettes on site and simmers pho from beef bones, ginger and toasted onion, so both halves of the menu are being made rather than assembled. Sandwiches come together to order and they are cheap.
Richmond's Vietnamese food gets overshadowed by everything else on offer, mostly because people arrive with a fixed idea of what this city eats. Good pho hides in units that look like nothing from the road. The French pastry end of a Vietnamese bakery counter is the part most people walk straight past, and it is frequently the best value on the board.
McClelland Road runs through West Cambie. That part of the city filled with towers over the last fifteen years, and the 4720 address belongs to the newer development pattern, which means ground-floor retail under housing rather than a surface lot out front. Aberdeen and Capstan stations are both a reasonable walk.
Bread comes out in batches at every bakery of this kind, which affects what you get and when. Take-out is the obvious move with sandwiches, though the pho and the pastries reward sitting down, so it is worth deciding which trip you are making before you order.
In the West Cambie neighbourhood of Richmond.
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