Restaurants
Shanghainese restaurant on Westminster Highway where you can watch xiao long bao being pleated behind glass. Soup dumplings, pan-fried buns, braised pork and hand-pulled noodles. Busy at lunch and worth booking ahead on weekends.
Anyone arriving hungry for soup dumplings is shopping in a narrower category than they expect. Richmond's reputation rests mostly on Cantonese cooking, and Shanghainese kitchens sit a little apart from it, leaning richer and sweeter with more braising and more wheat. Shanghai River works that tradition from a Westminster Highway address in City Centre. A kitchen in this category gets judged on its dumpling skins before anything else, and a bad one shows immediately, in a tear or a thin, flat broth.
The City Centre setting matters more than people assume. Alexandra Road, a couple of kilometres north, is so dense you can stand at one door and read six other signs. This part of the city is calmer and closer to the towers, the offices and Brighouse station, so a weekday table here often belongs to a lunch break rather than a night out. The area empties and refills on a different rhythm than the Golden Village strips do, and midweek is the easier visit.
For anyone who has never eaten a soup dumpling, a kitchen that pleats in view of the room is a gift. Watching explains the eating technique better than any instruction does. You lift it whole, make a small opening in the skin, drink the broth first and bite second, which is not obvious to anybody who has never been shown. Take someone through that once and they will order them for the rest of their life. Demonstrating it costs nothing at all.
In the City Centre neighbourhood of Richmond.
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Casual Shanghainese spot on Westminster Highway known around Richmond for soup dumplings and pan-fried pork buns at prices that stay reasonable. Small room, quick turnover, and portions built for sharing across the table.
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Long-running Cantonese banquet restaurant on the second floor of London Plaza. Big round tables, live seafood tanks and a dim sum service that starts early. Richmond families book it for weddings and birthdays as often as for a regular lunch.
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Chiu Chow and Cantonese specialist on Westminster Highway, walkable from the Canada Line. Dim sum at lunch plus Chiu Chow classics such as cold marinated goose and oyster omelette that are genuinely hard to find elsewhere in Richmond.
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The Richmond room of the long-established Kirin group, on Westminster Highway near No. 3 Road. Refined Cantonese cooking with some northern Chinese dishes, live seafood, and a dim sum lunch that skews lighter than most in the area.
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A Korean noodle and dumpling shop on Westminster Highway that makes its own mandu and sells them frozen by the bag. Bibimbap, japchae and kimchi stew round out a short menu. Small, cheap and fast, with a steady weekday lunch crowd.
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Steakhouse on Ackroyd Road working with Prime, wagyu and in-house dry-aged cuts, paired with sake and cocktails as well as wine. A quieter, higher-end alternative to the chain steakhouses along the No. 3 Road corridor.
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From the blog
Longer reads from the editor, with the places worth a detour linked inside them.
Dim sum is the meal I get asked about most, so here is a proper ranking: ten Richmond rooms from Aberdeen Centre to Anderson Road, what I judge them on, what I order every single time, and how to sit down on a Sunday without giving up your whole morning.
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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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