Grocery Stores
Off-the-boat seafood sold at Steveston's Fisherman's Wharf, open Thursday to Sunday mornings only and often sold out before closing time. Spot prawns in season plus whatever landed that day. Bring cash, or pre-order online and collect at the dock.
What is for sale depends entirely on what came in that morning. Steveston Spot Prawns & Seafood sells at Fisherman's Wharf on Bayview Street, at the foot of the village, where the fleet ties up and the catch changes with the season and the weather. Spot prawns are the headline when they are running, and the rest of the year it is whatever landed.
Buying off a boat is a different transaction from buying in a shop, and Steveston is one of the few places in the country where an ordinary person can still do it. There is no fixed inventory, no guarantee that a particular species will be there, and nobody to ask about substitutions. Whatever is in demand goes early, which is how people end up disappointed, so arriving at the start rather than the middle is the only reliable strategy.
The scene at the wharf tells you something about Richmond that the rest of the city hides. Steveston is a working harbour first and a heritage attraction second, and the dock sale is the point where those two things touch. It reads as a fishery selling its catch rather than a performance for visitors, and the crowd mixes people who cook seriously with people who wandered down from the boardwalk. Village parking on a summer weekend is bad, and prawn season mornings are the worst of it, so walking in from the residential streets north of Moncton beats hunting for a spot near the water.
In the Steveston neighbourhood of Richmond.
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Other grocery stores and nearby businesses in the Richmond directory.
A long-running Eastern and Central European grocer in Steveston, entered from the back of the building on Second Avenue. Imported sausage and smoked meats, rye breads, pickles, preserves and the candy people grew up with in Poland and Ukraine.
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A family-run butcher in Seafair Centre, trading since the early 1980s and one of very few shops in the area that dry-ages its own beef. European-style cuts, house sausage, cured meats, local poultry and lamb, and custom orders taken over the phone.
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The Vancouver chain's largest store, about 19,000 square feet on Garden City Road and open 8:30am to 10pm daily. Straightforward Chinese-Canadian grocery shopping: fresh meat and seafood counters, stacked produce, bulk dry goods and sauces.
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An older, no-frills Park Road supermarket that has outlasted flashier neighbors. Free parking, narrow aisles, and a genuinely pan-Asian shelf mix, with Chinese, Filipino, Malaysian and Indonesian pantry items sitting side by side at fair prices.
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Over 10,000 square feet of Japanese goods on Alderbridge Way, most of it imported directly. Bento, sushi and hot food made in-house each morning, plus frozen fish, seasonings, cosmetics and kitchenware. It closes at 6pm, so go earlier than you think.
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A busy Chinese supermarket in the plaza on No. 3 Road, popular for a well-stocked produce floor, a barbecue counter locals rate for leaner char siu, and bulk dace fish paste. Cashiers work fast; finding a parking spot is the only hard part.
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