Richmond Night Market

Richmond Night Market (Or Summer Night Market as it's currently known on Urban Spoon) is basically a cheaper, portable vesion of any of the local Chinese shopping centres and their food courts, that operates in the summertime. It's some business person's attempt to capitalize on the polularity of places like loi yun gai (lady's market in HK), but with stalls that sell fewer useful items.

Unfortunately, I was pretty full by the time I made it to the Night Market, but this Butter Chicken Poutine really caught my eye and if I ever visit again, I think I'll give it a try.  How can you go wrong with Butter Chicken and Poutine, lol!

Another stall I wanted to try was one of the Viet Namese stands.  The prices didn't look too bad and the food looked really tasty, even though I wasn't hungry.

Of course, what festival would be proper without a takoyaki stand?  There are several of these located throughout the food stalls,a nd this particular shop returns ever year and so far, I haven't been disappointed. 

My friend's girlfriend actually worked for them before and I've tried them on numerous occasions.

I wasn't really in the mood for something salty as I stuffed my face earlier on shao long bao, so I ended up getting something sweet and settled on a "Japanese Luxury", haha!  It was funny watching the staff here belt out announcements like "Authentic JAPANESE crepes!", or "Crepes from JAPAN!" haha!  There was a Korean stall right next door so maybe they were competing?  Or maybe they were playing on the whole authenticity fiasco.  I really didn't care where the staff were from, but in the end, what I got tasted good so it didn't matter for me one way or another. 

I got a macha, mochi, anko, whipped cream crepe which turned out surprisingly good.  The crepe skin itself wasn't freshly formed (they had a small pile of skins made already) but it still tasted really good. 

Night Market is chock full of shops that sell toys, cell phone accessories and other useless little trinkets.  One of the biggest travesties of Richmond Night Market is this one shop that sells "Samurai Swords". Being a practitioner of iaido, I get cold shivers up my spine knowing that there are shops like this trying to pawn off these "authentic Japanese swords" which are really no more than sharpened wall-hanger decorations, to the wannabe bad-boy types that flock there.  That place, and a shop that sells $10 prescription contact lenses has "SKETCHY" written all over them, haha!  Buyer beware I guess.

The food here isn't too bad, it's inexpensive, and it's always kind of fun to eat something outside in an festival type environment.  It's got a TON of variety and certainly one-ups the standard hot dogs, corn dogs, popcorn and cotton candy.  And in typical Chinese food court fashion, the prices get slashed big-time near closing (not that anything is overly expensive to begin with) so if you're a cheapskate like me, hit the place late in the evening (and you won't have to fight over parking around this time!).