Bars & Pubs
A pub on Sea Island at the north end of the No. 2 Road bridge, right beside the floatplane dock. The patio looks onto the river where seaplanes take off and land. A long list of BC microbrews and a menu built around burgers and fish.
Floatplanes are the reason anyone makes this trip. The pub sits at the point where Sea Island runs out into the middle arm of the Fraser, north of the No. 2 Road bridge, with the water and the seaplane dock immediately in front of it. Aircraft lift off and settle back down while tugs push barges along behind them.
Richmond has an enormous amount of good food and very few places where you can sit outside and watch something actually happen. That is the gap this one fills. The register is pub rather than restaurant, which suits a room where half the attention is on the sky rather than the table.
Sea Island itself is mostly runway, cargo bays and the small postwar pocket of Burkeville, so a pub out here reads as improbable until you see where it sits. Getting to it is the one hurdle. The Canada Line crosses the island, but the stations were placed for terminal traffic rather than for the water, so most people arrive by car or come along River Road. The surroundings are aviation and industry rather than housing, which means this works as a deliberate trip rather than as anyone's local.
Anyone showing a visitor around the city and wanting one stop that looks nothing like the rest of Richmond will find it earns the detour. Go on a clear evening if you have any say in the timing. The view is the whole argument, and it is a considerably weaker one through low cloud and rain.
In the Sea Island neighbourhood of Richmond.
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Other bars and pubs and nearby businesses in the Richmond directory.
A casual bar and brunch room in the Executive Hotel on Alderbridge Way. Oysters, tavern burgers and smoked salmon, plus a well-priced happy hour with mimosas and fried chicken sliders. Airport and hotel traffic keeps the hours long.
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A Westminster Highway bar and grill named after a regular who has eaten there daily for over thirty-five years. Big local wine, craft beer and spirits list, screens throughout and a patio. Opens early for takeout and runs through the evening.
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A restaurant and bar on Minoru Boulevard serving Pacific Northwest cooking from breakfast through dinner, with cocktails, BC wine and local beer. Live music on Thursdays and free parking. Handy to Richmond Centre, Minoru Park and the hospital.
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The restaurant and lounge at the Radisson on Cambie Road, serving West Coast plates and casual Italian. The lounge side is the useful part: a quiet place for a drink near YVR, with parking and hours running from breakfast to late evening.
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A waterfront bar and grill beside Milltown Marina with three patios: one facing the North Shore mountains, another looking out at the Fraser and the airport's main runway. Pub food, Sunday prime rib and a genuinely rare view.
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A whisky lounge inside Club Versante with a large by-the-glass list and izakaya-style plates off a robata grill. There is a glassed-in vault dining room, live entertainment several nights a week, and two small private rooms. Dressier than a pub.
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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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