Ice Cream & Dessert
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.
Kids lose their minds over a fish-shaped cone, and adults order one and then claim it was for the kids. Taiyaki is a street snack with a long history in Japan, usually filled with red bean and eaten walking. The version that traveled through Asian night markets and landed here holds soft serve instead, which is as fun as it sounds and considerably easier to eat than it looks.
Location does real work in this case. Alexandra Road behind the Golden Village malls holds a few hundred metres of kitchens stacked one after another, probably the densest restaurant strip in the province, and almost all of it is dinner. Dessert has always been the thin part of the offering. A group coming out of a long meal wants something small and does not want to get back in the car to find it.
Parking on the strip is the usual difficulty. The lots behind the buildings are shared among too many tenants and street parking is limited, so the practical approach is to leave the car once at Aberdeen and walk over. It takes five minutes and saves moving twice. The strip runs late by Metro Vancouver standards, hot pot especially, and these blocks stay busy long after the rest of Richmond has gone quiet. That is the clock this end of the city keeps, and a dessert counter tucked into it is following the same clock as everything around it.
In the Golden Village neighbourhood of Richmond.
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Other ice cream and dessert shops and nearby businesses in the Richmond directory.
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.
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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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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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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 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.
The Richmond Night Market sets its own season every year, so I am not going to pretend I know the 2026 dates. What I can tell you is where it sits, why the Canada Line beats driving, how to walk food alley properly, and which night of the summer is actually the best one to go.
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The Night Market's final season is the loud story. The quieter one: free admission at the Cannery ends Monday, Britannia keeps summer hours through Sunday, and Steveston does sunsets better than anyone.
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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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