Bubble Tea
An Aberdeen-area shop that stays open close to midnight, which is why it turns up on every late-night Richmond boba list. Fruit teas and milk teas with the usual topping range, ordered from a small counter rather than a sit-down room.
Coming out of a hot pot dinner at eleven, your options thin out quickly. Karaoke rooms run later than the kitchens, and the kitchens in this part of Richmond run later than almost anywhere else in Metro Vancouver, so the drink counters that matter in the Golden Village are the ones still serving after the restaurants empty. Lovin Tea sits on Hazelbridge Way in the middle of that trade.
Hazelbridge runs behind the No. 3 Road frontage through the Aberdeen and Yaohan blocks, and most people only ever see it from a parking lot. The area is dense in a way the rest of Richmond is not. Three or four major Asian malls stand within a few hundred metres, night market season lands on top of that in summer, and food court culture keeps the strip active well past the hour when suburban Metro Vancouver goes quiet. Aberdeen station is right there on the Canada Line, though the last train becomes a factor if you are out late.
Judge any Richmond boba shop on its plain milk tea before judging it on anything involving fruit and cheese foam. Sweetness is the variable that matters most, and ordering below the default the first time tells you what the base actually tastes like without sugar covering for it. Most of the traffic through this block is takeaway, which suits the pace. People come out of the malls, order, and keep moving toward wherever the evening is going next, and the shops here are built around that rhythm rather than against it.
In the Golden Village neighbourhood of Richmond.
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Other bubble tea shops and nearby businesses in the Richmond directory.
A newer Yaohan Centre shop that steams its own taro and ube in house instead of reaching for powder, which shows up clearly in the texture of the milk lattes. Fruit teas and matcha round out a short menu. Find it on the No. 3 Road frontage.
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An Aberdeen Square shop steps from the SkyTrain doing dessert-like drinks: taro and purple sweet potato milk, oreo slush with cheese foam, salted cream toppings. More indulgent than most of the strip, and the portions are generous.
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A long-standing Golden Village Taiwanese tea house that is as much a restaurant as a boba shop, serving rice plates and snacks until late. Handy when half your group wants dinner and the other half only wants a milk tea.
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An independent Golden Village shop that pairs its bubble tea with Hong Kong egg waffles and ice cream, so most orders leave with a drink in one hand and a waffle in the other. Afternoon and evening hours only, running later on weekends.
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A family-run stall in the Richmond Public Market food court that has been pouring milk tea for more than twenty years, long before the Golden Village boba boom. Also does fresh fruit drinks and Taiwanese wheel cakes. Cheap and unpretentious.
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An unusual crossover at No. 3 and Cook: fruit-forward bubble tea on one side, French-style low-sugar cakes on the other. Mango pomelo sago and passion fruit teas get ordered most, and the cake boxes make it a gift stop as well.
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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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Minoru Park's 40th annual Halloween fireworks festival, a 40-year pumpkin patch at Richmond Country Farms, Halloween Hoot at the Nature Park, and Richmond's fireworks rules.
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