Cafés
A Taiwanese cafe on Alexandra Road, family-run since 1987, serving tea and coffee alongside a full menu of rice and noodle plates. Old-school, unhurried and open late, it predates most of the Golden Village restaurant strip around it.
Walking in expecting espresso and a pastry case is the mistake people make with a Taiwanese cafe. The format is not a coffee shop with food attached. Tea and coffee are there, certainly, but so is a full menu of rice and noodle plates, and the actual proposition is a room where you can eat a proper meal at an odd hour and nobody hurries you toward the door.
That unhurried quality is getting scarce across Metro Vancouver. Rents push operators toward turnover, and turnover means smaller tables, harder chairs and a staff member appearing with the bill before you have finished. Rooms built on the opposite principle survive by being useful when other places are not: after a shift, after an airport run, after a film at the mall, when the question is less what to eat than where you are allowed to sit down.
Alexandra Road turns over constantly around it. Restaurants open, run a few years, close, and get replaced by something with a brighter sign, which is part of what makes the strip worth revisiting and part of what makes it exhausting to keep track of. Parking behind the buildings is the same shared struggle as the rest of the street, easing only as the dinner rush breaks. A cafe in this style rewards arriving without a plan and staying longer than you intended, which is a different proposition from anything else on the block and the reason to know it is there.
In the Golden Village neighbourhood of Richmond.
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Other cafés and nearby businesses in the Richmond directory.
A twenty-year Vancouver Hong Kong-style cafe that finally crossed the bridge to Alexandra Road, doing the full cha chaan teng repertoire of baked pork chop rice, macaroni soup and milk tea. Open past 11pm, which suits the Golden Village crowd.
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A small specialty bar in Empire Centre near Aberdeen Station that takes coffee and matcha equally seriously, with careful pour-overs in a tidy, minimal room. Free mall parking makes it an easy weekday stop for Golden Village office workers.
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A busy Hong Kong-style cafe off Hazelbridge Way known for late hours and an enormous menu of rice plates, congee, thick toast and milk tea. The kind of place Richmond families end up at after a movie or a long day of shopping.
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Taiwanese cafe in Continental Centre that works as both a bubble tea stop and a full sit-down meal. Rice and noodle plates, hot pots and popcorn chicken alongside a long drinks list. Open late, which makes it a default after-movie spot.
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A small scratch bakehouse tucked into President Plaza that bakes everything on site using French technique. Croissants are the draw, especially the double-baked salted egg yolk custard one, alongside cream puffs, cakes and matcha or black sesame pastries.
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