5 Great Restaurants in Richmond, British Columbia

10 miles south of Vancouver you’ll find one of the greatest concentrations of excellent Asian restaurants in North America. Richmond, British Columbia, is part of the Vancouver metropolitan area, but it feels like you’re on the other side of the planet. About 75% of Richmond’s population has Asian roots, and less than a third of its citizens call English their first language. Don’t expect the quaint, touristy Chinatowns found in larger Canadian or American cities, though; Richmond is a modern city, with strip malls and office complexes full of businesses owned by and catering to the Asian community. Its vibrant, varied Asian culinary scene is only a SkyTrain ride away from Vancouver, making it a must-stop for anybody visiting Canada’s third-largest metro area. 

We recently ate our way through Richmond during the Lunar New Year weekend, feasting at dumpling houses, tea rooms, and barbecues, and sampling the city’s unique culinary culture. Here’s the best of what we experienced, in order of when we ate there.

HK BBQ Master

Our first stop was lunch at HK BBQ Master, and I can’t imagine a better kickoff to our tour. When Anson Leung made the journey from Hong Kong to British Columbia with his parents in the early ‘90s, he was still waiting to be born. A few years later his dad started a barbecue restaurant in a small space inside the covered parking lot of a big box superstore, where he specialized in cooking meat in the style of his native Hong Kong; it became one of the best and most popular restaurants in town. Leung took over for his father in the mid ‘10s, and today goes through between 150 and 200 ducks and hundreds of pounds of pork and chicken a day. HK BBQ Master serves up succulent cuts of pork and chicken, lightly spiced and sauced, and roasted or barbecued, with sides of rice and broccoli florets. The small dining room can hold a dozen or so parties, but it truly thrives as a takeout spot, at least based on the line that stretched from the pickup window out of the parking deck and snaked around the next block. The name isn’t overselling the place; Leung truly is a master of Hong Kong barbecue.

Bamboo Grove

Two of our meals came as part of Alexandra Gill’s Dine Like a Critic tour. Gill, a former food critic for the national Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail, has been covering Vancouver’s food scene for two decades, and her tour takes guests to both the city’s best-known restaurants and some of its hidden gems. In Richmond she first welcomed us to Bamboo Grove, which opened in 1963, making it the oldest Chinese restaurant in town. Their recent Lunar New Year dinner was a multi-course feast full of seafood, lamb and beef, with at least two courses ranking among the very best food I ate in Richmond. First up was a heavenly pork stomach and white pepper soup that didn’t just taste delicious but also left a warm, hazy, deeply comforting feeling inside me. I could’ve had two or three bowls of that soup. Later on we had steaming lamb chop lollipops that effortlessly came off the bone; it was Super Bowl weekend, so football was on my mind, and all I could think about was how these would absolutely kill as game day snacks. Forget the chicken wings and get yourself some of these lamb chop lollipops, if you’re anywhere near Richmond. Other top-notch offerings included the Szechuan beef, which slightly numbed the tongue; the Alaskan king crab; and the fried abalone in oyster shell. Bamboo Grove also brought me my first encounter with geoduck, which is a large clam and not a Pokémon; it’s actually pronounced “gooey duck,” and it’s traditionally eaten at the Lunar New Year to ensure good luck and prosperity in the coming year. Just as we eat black-eyed peas and collard greens on New Year’s Day in the South, Asian communities eat geoduck on the Lunar New Year. Bamboo Grove served it with egg, and although I can’t claim to be a fan of its taste or texture, I can at least say that I’ve tried it. Bamboo Grove’s history is almost as interesting as its cuisine; its menu and focus has changed several times over the decades, initially targeting Western tastes with something similar to American Chinese food, and then growing more authentic throughout the years as Richmond’s demographics changed. That’s the kind of information Gill shares with her guests, making Dine Like a Critic not just delicious but educational, too.

The Fish Man

Our second stop on Gill’s tour was The Fish Man, a seafood-forward Szechuan spot that was a little bit younger and hipper (but no less tasty) than Bamboo Grove. The Fish Man’s Lunar New Year menu started with more geoduck, but prepared in a different way than Bamboo Grove; tender slices of lightly seasoned geoduck were complemented with crushed nuts, which gave it a satisfying crunch. You can never have too much good luck. The Fish Man also introduced us to another Lunar New Year staple, the Four Joys Meatball—a pork ball that pays tribute to togetherness and community. We were fortunate to meet many of the poor creatures ready to have their lives voided for our sustenance at The Fish Man, including a typically large king crab who was not particularly excited about shuffling off this mortal coil. Too bad for him: he was quite tasty served up two different ways, steamed with garlic and then breaded and fried. Thanks for your sacrifice, my friend. Later on we enjoyed a hearty sour cabbage fish hotpot and finished it all up with another traditional Lunar New Year dish, tang yuan—sticky rice balls with a black sesame filling that gushed out when bitten into. Whereas Bamboo Grove was refined and classy, The Fish Man was bright and raucous, and the two contrasted each other perfectly.

Dinesty Dumpling House

Some might take it easy the day after overindulging with two multi-course dinners. Not us, though; we dove right back into it the next afternoon with lunch at Dinesty Dumpling House, where we dined upon a variety of soup dumplings, pot stickers, and rolls, and even some dishes that weren’t wrapped inside flour. The highlight was the steamed black truffle and pork soup dumpling; this bite-sized morsel was warm, hearty and flavorful, with a burst of broth that flooded the mouth. The pan fried pork buns were a spicier treat, whereas the pan fried Chinese green onion pancake reminded me of Siu To’s irresistible snacks from the neighboring province of Alberta. Among Dinesty’s sizable and helpful staff are two serving robots who might bring you your food, one of whom is apparently a robot cat; that has no impact upon the food or how good Dinesty is, but I felt it needed to be noted. Dinesty’s wonderful dumplings should be a mandatory part of any trip to Richmond.

Baan Lao

Our last meal in Richmond was the fanciest. Baan Lao, an upscale Thai restaurant in the historical fishing village of Steveston, offers a tasting menu with wine or cocktail pairings that combines inviting dishes with immaculate presentation. A trio of amuse-bouches featured a scoop of watermelon dusted with dried fish flakes, a water buffalo meatball resting upon a spoon-shaped slice of pineapple, and a carrot crown with roasted cashews and coconut flakes. An organic Thai chicken dumpling looked like a roosting chicken; the green dumpling bore an orange beak and small eyes as it sat above a latticework of dried straw inside a bowl. Courses were often just a bite or two, which was the exact right amount of food after our gluttony from the day before. Perhaps the most striking part of the menu was a phat thai that arrived inside a delicate net made up of fried egg. When cut into with a fork the net promptly burst open, mixing the fried egg with the rice and black tiger prawns within. Baan Lao’s intricate presentation is a crucial part of the meal, turning these mouthwatering delicacies into individual pieces of art. And hey, the wine’s great, too. 

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, comedy, travel, theme parks, wrestling, and anything else that gets in his way. He’s also on Twitter @grmartin.