Bars & Pubs
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.
Fifteen minutes from an international terminal, a bar runs on different rhythms than a neighborhood pub does. Flight schedules do not respect dinner service. People arrive hungry at odd hours, jet-lagged and indifferent to whether the kitchen thinks it is lunchtime. The Free Bird sits inside the Executive Hotel on Alderbridge Way, squarely in that trade, and hotel rooms that also work for locals are the ones taking the second audience seriously rather than treating it as overflow.
Alderbridge crosses the top of City Centre, roughly parallel to Westminster Highway, through the part of Richmond that has changed most in twenty years. Towers have gone up along it. Lansdowne station is close, the airport is a short drive north over Sea Island, and the whole pocket has shifted from low commercial buildings to residential density without ever developing a high street to go with it.
Drinking in Richmond is a strange category generally. There is little of the pub culture that Vancouver neighborhoods take for granted, and what exists tends to attach itself to hotels, casinos or plazas rather than to a street you would walk down for its own sake. That makes a hotel bar more useful here than it would be in most cities, particularly around an early flight or a late arrival when the alternatives are a food court or nothing at all. Anyone staying nearby without a car will find this one of the few places within walking distance worth the trip downstairs.
In the City Centre neighbourhood of Richmond.
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Other bars and pubs and nearby businesses in the Richmond directory.
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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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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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 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.
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Richmond's long-running sports pub on Blundell Road, with more than thirty screens including three large ones. There are separate pub and dining sides, weekend entertainment, and standard pub food. The default neighborhood spot for watching a game.
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