The Richmond Night Market opened around 2 weeks ago, and I’ve already gone twice! There isn’t much to do in Richmond, so what better than to go take a stroll and grab some food. I ended up going again the second week it opened, and went there on a mission to fill myself up for dinner. Admission is $1, but there’s free parking and quite a huge lot, compared to the $5 parking at the Summer Night Market by Vulcan Way. It gets quite trafficky along the River Rock Casino area though, but they have people patrolling, so it’s not too bad.

Chef James Xin Jiang Man BBQ – Chicken and Lamb Skewers

• Any 3 skewers for $6.75 or 5 for $11
• We saw that the line up was long, but decided it must’ve been good for it to be so long, so we lined up. Waited for probably at least 15 minutes before we got called for our order, but the girl told us that there weren’t any beef skewers left, and we could either wait a little longer, or just choose another skewer. We ended up choosing another chicken skewer, but I was still pretty disappointed with not getting what I had ordered!
• Both Chicken and Lamb Skewers were still really delicious though, with tender meat, and a great flavour. This was probably one of the better stands of the night.

Takoyaki

• $5 for 6 mini takoyakis
• Probably one of the worse takoyakis I’ve had! It was all dough, with one tiny piece of octopus. The dough felt as though it wasn’t even cooked properly. It was all mushy as you can see from the above picture.

Bakudanyaki – Original Giant Takoyaki

• $5 each
• Since we were so disappointed with the takoyakis at the last stand, we ended up going to Bakudanyaki to get a Giant Takoyaki. Their poster claimed that there would be squid, cabbage, corn, red ginger, shrimp, rice cake, quail egg, and green onion, which were no lies. The Giant Takoyaki was filled with all these ingredients and the dough was thin and crispy on the outside. Wasn’t mushy like the last stand. I thought the quail egg inside was pretty interesting too!
• They had 4 flavours: Original, Curry, Chili, Wasabi

Dim Sum Express

What’s night market without my favourite Curry Fish Balls? There were quite a few Dim Sum stands, but we just ended up at Dim Sum Express since it was close by and there seemed to be quite a crowd too.

Curry Fish Balls

• 6 for $3.00
• Wasn’t anything amazing, and have had better ones before. Not very saucy, and not as spicy as most stands would serve. Spice was just right for me though, since I can’t take spice, but I wish it were a little more saucy.

Shrimp Dumplings

• 4 for $3.50
• Didn’t try this so can’t comment 🙂

I ❤ Tofu – Sweet Taro Cold Tofu Pudding

• $3.50 for just Tofu Pudding; add $0.50 for each topping
• Smooth tofu and the sweet taro was a good compliment with a bit of chewiness to it. Perfect dessert after all the greasy food.

BBQ Squid

• $6 a bowl
• Last item I really wanted was the BBQ Squid. We looked around different aisles to find a good place for it, and many had large line ups. We ended up at the stand named BBQ Squid, which seemed to only sell BBQ Squid, and there was quite a large line up, so we assumed it would be good.
• This had to be the worse item we had of the night. After waiting around 5 minutes, we got our Squid, which was freshly grilled in front of us. It tasted full of this curry powder that I had saw them sprinkle while grilling, but that was probably the only seasoning they used. The squids were also not cooked properly or not to the type I had wanted. I wanted the squid to be crispy at the ends, but they were totally not. So disappointed and definitely not going back here again. We even ended up throwing more than half of it away since it was so bad!

Ice Cream Churros

• $5
• Didn’t get a picture of the stand, but it’s the only stand that sells Ice Cream Churros
• I had this the first week I went to the night market, and thought that it would be pretty cool. I mean ice cream and churros? I had imagined the ice cream to be inside the churro, but clearly I was thinking too much.
• It’s basically 4 churros with a scoop of ice cream, which you can choose the flavour of. I ended up with vanilla ice cream. I have to say it was a disappointment, as I felt that the churros weren’t even cooked fresh. They were pretty hard and seemed like they had sat there for a while. The ice cream just tasted like cheap Safeway ice cream, but I have to say the ice cream was probably the best part of it, which is pretty sad.
• Nothing special, and definitely not worth $5!