Richmond Night Market: Summer 2023

The Richmond Night Market is Vancouver’s biggest 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. I usually try to come once a year to check out what they have to offer.

This year, general admission is $7 per person if you get the zoom pass, which comes with 5 passes. With the zoom pass, you are able to bypass the regular line and walk right in. I would highly recommend you to come in a group of 5 or 10, or to make some friends with strangers and purchase the zoom pass together in order to skip the entrance line.

Recommended: Read about my last review of the Richmond Night Market in 2021.

What we ate this year

Here is everything we tried this year – some classics and some new.

Yum yum Tteokbokki ($8-15)

Yum yum Tteokbokki is a new booth we tried this year located at F106, near the entrance of the food section. They offer classic spicy Korean rice cakes with different sauces. Disclosure: The owner of this booth reached out to me on Instagram and offered me 3 items to try for free.

We tried their rose tteokbokki ($15), cheese tteokbokki ($15) and their kimari ($8).

The cheese tteokbokki is the more classic choice as it comes with the regular spicy sauce and a slice of cheese that is torched on top, giving it a nice cheesy pull when you pick up a rice cake. But I actually liked the rose tteokbokki more because I love rose sauce! It is also less spicy and more sweet, so if you can’t handle any spice, the rose tteokbokki would be a better choice for you.

Lastly, the kimari is like a deep fried seaweed roll with noodles inside. It has a nice crunch and is a tasty way to eat the leftover sauce from your tteokbokki.

Deep fried squid tentacles ($18)

This is an item I always get every time I go to the night market 🤤. I love deep fried squid and this stall always fries it so well! In this photo, we ordered the large size and for our sauce, we got the garlic mayo.

BBQ squid + Ramen donut

Our friends ordered these 2 dishes and we got to try some. They love the bbq squid but since we were already getting the deep fried squid, we just tried a bit of their bbq squid. For around $12, the stall they went to gave decently large portions. There are a couple of bbq squid stalls actually and they all look very similar (has a blue banner). One of the stalls is more famous than the other and offers a smaller portion for a higher price, but it has more flavour and bbq smoke.

The ramen donut is probably an abomination in my books. Looks nasty and tasted just wrong 🤢.

Charcoal salted egg yolk bubble waffle ($14)

Located in booth F28, Eggette sells bubble waffles, a Taiwanese treat I had often as a child. Their most unique flavour is the charcoal salted egg yolk so that’s the one we chose. The colour of the bubble waffle is black, which makes it look really cool. The inside has a salty and sweet flavour from the salted egg yolk and the sweetness from the bubble waffle. Overall, we really liked this item and felt it was worth $14!

Mochi french toast flight ($17)

Tochi is not a new booth, but last year I was too full to try their mochi french toasts even though it was on my list of things to try 😥. Disclosure: Tochi and I are doing a giveaway on Instagram for their french toast flight and they also offered me a flight for free to try.

I was super excited to try the french toast flight because it was what I wanted to try last year. It comes with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream and 4 pieces of mochi french toast (HK style). Each of the 4 pieces of toast have a different filling – nutella, taro, matcha and kaya. And at the end, they drizzle on condensed milk 😍.

Really delicious dessert and for $17, it’s a decent price since you get 4 flavours and ice cream. I recommend sharing this with at least 2 people. Out of the 4 flavours, I liked the kaya the most! Maybe it’s because I recently went to Singapore. My second favourite was the matcha.

You can find Tochi at booth F37.

Peach soda ($7)

Lastly, we washed down all this food with a peach soda drink from a blue banner stall. We were trying to avoid really thick drinks like slushies and bubble tea with all the toppings. The peach soda was refreshing and had a nice fizz to it.

Final thoughts

I had a really fun night at the Richmond Night Market. Because we came as a group of 6, we were able to try more food than if just me and Kelvin went.

Out of everything we got, I would recommend the 2 squids (deep fried and bbq), Tochi’s mochi french toast flight, and the salted egg yolk bubble waffle. The one stall I would try to avoid is the Aloha boys with the pineapple rice, the flying noodles and their abominable ramen donut. The presentation of their items are just for social media, but the food isn’t that good and there’s not that much of it. Items I wanted to try but was too full include the mango sticky rice and the birria tacos.

Games are more expensive this year either, costing at least $10 per play. We played a few games like the dice rolling luck one, and the catching baton but we didn’t win anything.

One thing I really thought was cute this year are the neon signs at the food booths. Not every booth has one, but most have a customized sign with their booth name and a cute graphic of what they sell – helped us navigate the busy food area.

Every year, the Richmond Night Market gets more expensive and more crowded. Slowly it is becoming a turn-off but overall, I think I will still make a visit next year to check out the trending foods and buy some socks 😅.

Sincerely, Loewe