Ice Cream & Dessert
A Steveston Landing gelato parlour making small-batch Italian gelato in house from fresh local ingredients, alongside frozen yogurt. Classic flavours sit beside originals, and the waterfront location is why the line stretches on summer evenings.
Late September beats July for a cone at Steveston Landing, and the reason is standing right in front of you on a warm evening. The Landing sits at the edge of the boardwalk, so anybody finishing a walk from Garry Point or coming off the wharf passes the door, and in high summer the queues stretch further than a first-time visitor expects.
The shoulder season is when the village belongs to residents again. It stays warm enough for gelato well into autumn, the boardwalk is close to empty, and you get the waterfront the way people who live here experience it rather than the July version with a thousand people on it.
Small-batch frozen dessert is a harder operation than it looks. Most of what gets sold across Metro Vancouver arrives in a tub from somewhere else, and the shops that mix their own have taken on labor and risk in exchange for control over the result. That trade-off is the only reason the category has any real variation in it.
The position near the fishing boats is worth more than any flavour list. Sales go on at the wharf while you eat, which is a better twenty minutes than most things in this city and something that happens in exactly one place in Metro Vancouver. Steveston is walkable from anywhere in the village and awkward from anywhere else, so build a stop here into a longer trip rather than driving down for a single scoop.
In the Steveston neighbourhood of Richmond.
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Other ice cream and dessert shops and nearby businesses in the Richmond directory.
A Steveston Village counter serving homemade ice cream by the scoop a couple of blocks from the water. It shares a building with another independent ice cream shop, which makes tasting your way between the two an easy afternoon detour.
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A gelato and dessert shop on Moncton Street in the middle of Steveston Village, and a fairly recent addition to the strip. Cases of gelato by the scoop plus other sweets, positioned squarely for the summer walk-up crowd off the boardwalk.
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A walk-up treat shop at the corner of Third Avenue and Bayview serving soft serve, flavoured slushes and the two swirled together. Cheap and fast, and positioned exactly where you want it after walking the Steveston boardwalk past the cannery.
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A Second Avenue scoop shop in Steveston Village with a broad range of ice cream and sorbet including local makers, plus bubble waffles, bubble tea and shakes. Picnic tables outside, prices below the tourist strip, and open until 9pm in summer.
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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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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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From the blog
Longer reads from the editor, with the places worth a detour linked inside them.
The West Dyke Trail is about five and a half kilometres of flat gravel between Terra Nova Rural Park and Garry Point, and I ride it most mornings. Here is what is actually at the north end, which way to walk so the wind is on your side, and why winter is the better season for it.
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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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Richmond BC has far more park than people realize, and a lot of it is a gravel path with no washroom. Here is my working list of the ones that actually hold up with kids, ranked by parking, toilets, wind off the Strait and how far you are from a snack when it all goes wrong.
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