Restaurants
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.
People arrive at a Shanghainese kitchen with a fairly fixed idea of what they want, and Richmond gives them an unusual number of places to test it against. Shanghai Taste sits inside that competition on Westminster Highway, several minutes south of the Alexandra Road strip and operating on entirely different terms.
Westminster runs east to west through the middle of the city, carrying office blocks, older low-rise plazas, newer towers and a great deal of traffic at rush hour. Restaurants along it mostly feed the people who live and work within a few minutes on foot. That changes the pace of a meal. Alexandra Road draws a regional crowd that has driven in for the evening and settles in for it; this stretch turns over from the neighborhood, faster and with less ceremony.
Come with three or four people rather than two. Shanghainese cooking is built to be spread across a table, and a pair ordering individual plates ends up with volume instead of variety, which is the most common mistake visitors make in this category. Lansdowne station is the nearest Canada Line stop, though it is a walk rather than a hop, so most people drive and take their chances with the plaza lots. Those lots are shared among all the tenants and they tighten around the middle of the day. The City Centre generally rewards arriving slightly before or slightly after the obvious hour.
In the City Centre neighbourhood of Richmond.
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Other restaurants and nearby businesses in the Richmond directory.
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.
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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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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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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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