Ice Cream & Dessert
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.
Organic milk soft serve is the whole menu, dressed with toppings that stay on the restrained side: honeycomb, matcha syrup, sea salt. The soft serve itself is lighter and less sweet than the machine standard, which is either the entire appeal or a disappointment depending on what you came for. Dairy-forward with a bit of salt on it beats a sugar bomb, particularly when you are eating it standing up in the middle of an afternoon.
The McArthurGlen village on Sea Island is laid out as one long open-air loop with the exits at either end, and roughly two thirds of the way round most people need to stop. That is where this counter sits. If you are shopping with children, it is the reliable bribe.
The mall sits next to the airport, reachable on the Canada Line at Templeton Station or by car off Russ Baker Way, and there is nothing else nearby, so nobody drives out here for one cone. Sea Island is exposed and it gets windy, more than you would expect from a five-minute hop across the channel, so an outdoor dessert in February is a different proposition from an outdoor dessert in July. Dress for the island rather than for the mall. The loop is entirely open air and there is less shelter along it than the architecture suggests, which is worth knowing before you plan a long afternoon out there with kids in tow.
In the Sea Island 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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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.
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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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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.
Richmond does not hand you a view the way downtown Vancouver does. What it gives you is sea-level horizons, fog on the dyke, working boats, and the No. 3 Road corridor after rain. Here are the spots I keep going back to, and when the light is right at each.
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Iona is out at the end of Ferguson Road on Sea Island, past the treatment plant, and the long jetty out into the Strait is the strangest walk in Richmond BC. Here is how to get there, when the birds make it worth the drive, what the planes do overhead, and why the park stays empty.
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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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