Richmond Night Market: Summer 2021

The Richmond Night Market is Vancouver’s biggest and most delicious night market every summer. They boast over 120 food vendors with 600+ different food items. They also provide carnival-style games and prizes, stage performances, and retail stalls selling jewelry, stationary, clothing, and other goods.

General admission is $5, children and seniors are free. The zoom pass is $25 this year and comes with $5 tickets so the breakdown is the same price per person as the general admission, but you get to skip some of the line at least.

This year because of covid, the Richmond Night Market has crowd control procedures on site to comply with health authority requirements. Due to high volume of visitors, expect a 30-60 minute delay at admission. Face Masks are also mandatory in certain areas.

This review will showcase some of the new and trendy food items this year as well as some of my classic night market favourites.

What I ate this year

Fantuan x Blackball shaved ice ($15 and $9)

This year, Fantuan, a food delivery service, reached out to me to try some of their new night market drinks in collaboration with Blackball, a Taiwanese dessert restaurant. We tried their 2 most popular desserts – the Fantuan pride ($15) and the fruit blast ($9). Most of their shaved ice drinks are $9 and they also have a lavender soft serve ice cream.

The Fantuan pride is a giant shaved ice with coconut jelly, coconut pudding, jelly, blueberries marshmallows and salted cheese foam. This is enough to share with 4 people so it’s a good deal for a family (especially on a hot day). I found it slightly hard to eat because there’s so much on top. I really liked the coconut pudding and jelly as it added more texture than just shaved ice. The salted cheese foam was also really interesting and made it unique. I feel they could’ve totally removed the marshmallows though, as they didn’t add much to anything.

The fruit blast had shaved ice with mango, pineapple and dragon fruit. I thought this drink didn’t look exactly as their photo (the photo had more fruit), so I was expecting more chunks of fruit.

Pineapple bun sando ($7)

New to the Richmond Night Market this year is the pineapple bun sando. If you are Cantonese, you will be familiar with the pineapple bun (context: there is no actual pineapple in the bun). It is called a pineapple bun because it kinda looks like a pineapple at the top with the crisscross pattern. The top has a crumbly sweet layer.

This stall took the classic pineapple bun and used it like a hamburger bun – they slide it into a top and bottom layer and put fried chicken and slaw in the middle to create a fried chicken sandwich.

I thought it was quite a fun idea and it’s actually quite filling so my boyfriend and I shared one together. The fried chicken inside was moist but the batter wasn’t super crunchy or deep fried. I really liked the slaw they added. The middle section tasted like a normal fried chicken burger, but the pineapple bun offered a sweet aftertaste. My only complaint is that the pineapple bun itself is soft, so the structural integrity of the sandwich is questionable (hard to hold everything together).

Deep fried squid tentacles ($13/18)

One item I always get from the Richmond Night Market is the deep fried squid tentacles. A small is $13 and a large portion is $18. This year, we ordered the small and it was enough to share with 2 people.

These squid tentacles are soooo gooood. It’s deep fried so well and you can choose a sauce to go with it (we chose sweet & sour). The squid inside has a good texture and is not too chewy.

Taco nori sushi ($8)

One of the more trendy items this year is this sushi taco. Now I really try to avoid weird sushi applications (ex. sushi pizza, sushi donut…), but I decided to give this one a try. They deep-fry seaweed into a taco shell shape and fill it with rice and a fish topping of your choice. I went with the spicy salmon taco for $8 – it has chopped salmon sashimi with the classic spicy sauce and cucumber.

It actually doesn’t taste as bad as I thought it would (but still I think an authentic Japanese sushi chef would be like wtf why). The portion is quite big and the seaweed taco shell held everything together nicely. There wasn’t too much rice so the balance was not bad.

Croffle ($7)

Moving onto desserts, I wanted to try the croffle, which is a croissant cooked into a waffle form. They offer different toppings like oreo, caramel, etc. but I didn’t really want any of the toppings. I wish they had a normal ice cream and fruit one because I would’ve gotten that one. Anyways, I just got the plain/original croffle for $7 and it only has some powdered icing on top.

It was interesting to watch them make it actually! Pre-made croissant dough is placed inside a waffle maker and pressed down. The inside of the croffle tastes exactly like a flaky croissant (I love croissants). I think it would’ve been more interesting if I had chosen a topping because the original croffle mostly just tasted like a croissant but looked like a waffle. Small points for being easy to eat though!

iTofu pudding with mango (under $10)

I don’t remember the price of this dessert but it was certainly under $10 (maybe closer to $7-8). We chose a tofu dessert and added the mango. This is a cold and not-to-sweet dessert (isn’t that the best Asian compliment? Not too sweet).

The tofu was really soft and beautiful! A very refreshing and guiltless dessert- the perfect dish to end our night. Sorry for the blue-ish photo (night time and we were sitting under a blue lit tree).

Final thoughts

Because of covid, I found the inside to be less busy and this is especially noticeable when waiting in line to order food from the food stalls. However, there is a longer wait to enter the night market in the beginning. Side note that we got to skip the line and entrance because of Fantuan. There were also less game stalls. I find that once inside, many people are wearing masks regardless of if it’s a mandatory area or not, however it is almost impossible to distance yourself from other folks.

In terms of the food, I think I still love my deep fried squid the most lol. It is a must get!! I also really liked the tofu dessert. Usually at the night market, I try to order more unique things (like the pineapple sando, sushi taco, etc.) and not the classic night market foods like takoyaki, skewers, etc. We also avoided the food trucks because we felt like we could go find these food trucks on another day, so we focused on food stalls that we can only find at the night market.

I feel like this year I didn’t spend as much money as last year. In total, we spent less than $50 for 2 people and we were full. Side note that our Fantuan drinks were free.

I had an awesome time at the Richmond Night Market this year. It has always been a summer tradition for me and I’m so glad I was able to go this year. So much good food and so many choices!

Sincerely, Loewe