Restaurants
Small Japanese izakaya in Continental Centre serving ramen, okonomiyaki, donburi and hot pot in a tight, dimly lit room. It went viral years ago for a beer-styled ramen, but the everyday draw is shareable plates and late hours.
Yuu occupies a tight, dimly lit room inside Continental Centre, the Sexsmith Road building set back from the No. 3 Road frontage in a way that makes it easy to drive past for years without registering it. The menu is built for sharing: ramen, okonomiyaki, donburi and hot pot, ordered in waves rather than all at once.
A ramen styled to look like a glass of beer gave the place a viral moment years ago, and it is still the first thing people mention. That is a poor reason to come. The better one is that Richmond has a great many Japanese restaurants and most of them are sushi counters. An izakaya is a different format, and there are fewer of them here than the size of the population would suggest. Small plates arrive across a long table, in a room dark enough that the conversation does not feel like it is happening under fluorescent light.
The whole strip north of Cambie Road eats late, and parking around Continental Centre and the Sexsmith side streets becomes a skill in itself once the evening gets going. Aberdeen station is walkable if you would rather not attempt it. The honest use case is the late window, after a film or after a shift, when the choice in most of the city narrows to almost nothing and a room built for slow rounds of small plates is the format that still makes sense.
In the Golden Village neighbourhood of Richmond.
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From the blog
Longer reads from the editor, with the places worth a detour linked inside them.
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