Bubble Tea
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.
Fluorescent lighting, a roll-down shutter and a laminated board are not what most people picture when they think about Richmond bubble tea now. The upstairs food court at the Richmond Public Market runs on that older model. Small independent stalls, plain fittings, people who have been coming for years. It is not like the other malls in this city, and that is the appeal.
The market sits on Westminster Highway at the north edge of the City Centre, older and plainer than the glass-and-escalator developments a few blocks north. Brighouse station is a couple of minutes away and Lansdowne is the next stop up, so the trip works easily without a car. Offices, clinics and services fill most of the surrounding blocks.
Bubble tea in Richmond is close to a utility. Dozens of shops sit within a few blocks of No. 3 Road, most of them good, plenty of them interchangeable, many of them running app ordering and forty topping combinations. What distinguishes the older independents is that they are attached to a place rather than to a brand, and the stalls that predate the boom tend to pour the simpler version of the drink that existed before the category turned into a franchise business.
Treat this as a daytime stop rather than an evening one. Market food courts follow the rhythm of the building around them, and this one empties out well before the restaurants on No. 3 Road get going. Coming at midday also puts you in the middle of the produce and dry goods trade downstairs, which is the reason most people are in the building at all.
In the City Centre neighbourhood of Richmond.
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Other bubble tea shops and nearby businesses in the Richmond directory.
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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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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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 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-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.
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