Ice Cream & Dessert
An ice cream counter upstairs in Aberdeen Centre, listed in Tourism Richmond's guide to the city's frozen desserts. Being inside the mall makes it an easy stop mid-shop, and it draws the Golden Village crowd rather than Steveston day-trippers.
Shopping runs long at Aberdeen Centre, and an ice cream counter upstairs exists for the moment when it has run too long. The crowd here is Golden Village rather than Steveston day-trippers, which gives the place a different character from the dessert shops over on the waterfront side of the city.
Dessert is taken seriously in Richmond. Shave ice shops, Hong Kong style dessert houses, soft serve counters, gelato and taiyaki all compete for the same evening, and a counter has to be decent to hold a spot inside a mall this busy. The competition does the quality control.
Being indoors is the underrated advantage. Nine months of the year this city is wet, and a dessert stop that does not involve standing on a boardwalk in the rain wins on that basis alone. Aberdeen has a Canada Line station at its door, so reaching it without a car is straightforward, and it works best as a stop inside a larger outing rather than a destination on its own.
Anyone new to the range of frozen dessert on offer in this city should treat Aberdeen as a starting point rather than an answer. The building holds several competing versions of the same idea within a few minutes of each other, which is the fastest way to work out what you actually like. The rest of the Golden Village then opens up from there, and it opens up a long way.
In the Golden Village neighbourhood of Richmond.
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Other ice cream and dessert shops and nearby businesses in the Richmond directory.
Taiyaki and soft serve served together, a fish-shaped waffle cone filled with soft serve and toppings, on the Alexandra Road restaurant strip. It stays open to midnight, which makes it the default after-dinner stop in the Golden Village.
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A small dessert cafe on the east end of Cambie Road that Tourism Richmond includes among the city's ice cream stops. It sits well away from the Golden Village dessert cluster, serving the surrounding residential blocks, so it stays quieter.
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Organic milk soft serve topped with honeycomb, matcha syrup or sea salt, served from a counter at the McArthurGlen outlet mall on Sea Island. Lighter and less sweet than typical soft serve, open until 9pm, and a fair reason to break up an afternoon.
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A small Anderson Road cafe pairing gelato with matcha lattes and Vietnamese coffee. It works as a quieter City Centre dessert stop when the Golden Village dessert shops are packed, and the drinks are as much the point as the scoops.
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A small scoop shop off Blundell Road making its own ice cream in rotating batches, leaning Asian with black sesame, Thai milk tea, Vietnamese coffee and ube. No seating and no free samples, but the ice cream is dense and pints travel home well.
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A Steveston gelato shop churning artisanal batches in house with Asian-leaning flavours such as Uji matcha, Hong Kong milk tea and espresso, plus mango yuzu and strawberry rose sorbetto. The owner trained in Italy; there are dairy-free options too.
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From the blog
Longer reads from the editor, with the places worth a detour linked inside them.
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Nothing on Alexandra Road is a secret. It is just in a strip mall with bad signage and no patio, which is why visitors never find it. Here is how I actually use Richmond's plazas and food courts, which specialists are worth the drive, and when not to bother.
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