Ethnic Eats – Sampling the World’s Cuisine Without Leaving Vancouver

Every country has some form of dumpling and meat on a stick shows up all over the world too, from Indonesian satay to American county fair corndogs. Why? Because somewhere along the line we discovered that putting a piece of meat on a stick was a handy way of cooking and eating our protein. And also because it tastes good.

Yesterday saw us sampling Vietnamese brochettes and sugar cane, today we go to the Richmond Night Market and have siu mai and lamb skewers.

Meat on a stick is made for festivals and fairs and night markets. What better way to wander around and eat than to have your meal handily presented on a bit of wood? You have a handle. You have a utensil. You’re golden.

Unsurprisingly, there are several kinds of meats-on-sticks to be had at the Richmond Night Market - the street meat epicentre - as well as a new item that showed up this year, the trendy “potato-spiral on a stick“. I don’t think it will last, but you never know. It sure looked popular.

In terms of meat, there is sausage on a stick, siu mai and whole grills full of lamb, beef and pork skewers. While there is nothing wrong with smokey, charcoal-grilled meat, especially cooked outdoors so you can smell the meat cooking a block away, I usually pass it up in favour of the many more interesting things on offer. The siu mai are flavourful and fatty dumplings, 4 to a stick that are a perennial favorite and the BBQ squid, rubbery and tentacly and saucy, is an absolute must.

Richmond Night Market is on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights until the end of September and then you’ll have to wait until next year.

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Richmond Night Market
Richmond, behind IKEA.