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Where to Eat in Vancouver: Sushi, Dim Sum, and the Best Cheap Eats on Commercial Drive

Everyone sells Vancouver on salmon and mountains. The truth: its Japanese and Cantonese food is the real reason to eat here. Here's where to eat in Vancouver, mapped by neighborhood, cheap eats included.

For the full day-by-day version of everything below, read the Vancouver itinerary with an interactive map.

Here’s the Vancouver food pitch you’ll get everywhere: salmon, oysters, mountains in the background, a $40 cedar-planked fish. And it’s not wrong, exactly. But if you ask me where to eat in Vancouver, I’m not sending you to the seafood postcard. I’m sending you for sushi and dim sum, because this is one of the best cities on the continent for both, and the everyday version of it — the cheap, fast, brilliant version — is the thing locals would actually miss if they moved away.

I moved here not knowing that. I figured it out the way everyone does: by accidentally eating a $9 sushi lunch that was better than $30 sushi back home, and standing on the sidewalk genuinely confused about how that was possible. Let me explain how it’s possible, and where to go.

Vancouver has a density of casual Japanese restaurants that’s hard to believe until you’re in it — a legacy of decades of Japanese immigration and a city that took the food seriously. The result is that downtown and the West End are dotted with small, unfussy sushi joints where a generous lunch combo runs $10–14 and the fish is genuinely fresh because the turnover is insane.

The everyday move: skip the fancy omakase counters (they exist and they’re great — Masayoshi in Fraser, if you want to splurge and book weeks out) and just walk into a busy neighborhood sushi spot at lunch. The chirashi bowls, the spicy tuna, the agedashi tofu, the salmon that’s been swimming basically yesterday. Tojo’s is the legendary high-end one (he reportedly invented the California roll here, and the omakase is a real occasion). But for daily eating, the West End’s countless small rooms are the miracle. You can eat exceptional sushi every day here for less than a sad sandwich costs elsewhere.

Now the Cantonese half, and this is the one people sleep on. Vancouver’s suburb of Richmond, just south near the airport, is one of the most Chinese cities outside Asia, and the dim sum there is world-class — I’d put it up against Hong Kong on a good day. This is where you go for the real weekend-morning, push-cart-or-order-sheet, tea-and-trolleys experience with three generations of a family at the next table.

The classics to chase: har gow (shrimp dumplings, the texture test of any good place), siu mai, char siu bao (barbecue pork buns), cheung fun (rice noodle rolls), and the egg tarts to finish. A serious dim sum brunch for two with tea lands around $40–60 and you’ll waddle out. Richmond’s big banquet-style halls do it best — go before 11 a.m. on a weekend or expect a wait, and don’t be shy about pointing at what the next table has.

If you can’t get to Richmond, Vancouver proper has solid options in and around the original Chinatown and on the east side, but I’ll be honest — for the full experience, the SkyTrain ride to Richmond is worth it. The Canada Line gets you there in about 25 minutes from downtown.

For everyday cheap eating with actual character, Commercial Drive (“The Drive”) on the east side is my favourite stretch in the city. Historically Italian, now gloriously mixed — Ethiopian, Mexican, Vietnamese, vegan, old-school espresso bars, and the kind of unpretentious rooms where $15 gets you full and happy.

The Italian heritage lingers in the espresso (the old café-bar culture here is the real deal — order a macchiato and stand at the bar) and the gelato. But the joy of the Drive now is the range: a banh mi for $7, an Ethiopian veggie combo to share, a taqueria, a slice place, a dive that does a perfect cheap brunch. It’s the neighborhood where the city feels most like itself — a little scruffy, a little leftist, deeply un-corporate, and full of people who actually live there.

Aside from the food, it’s just a great walk. Murals, indie bookshops, the smell of coffee and pizza. If I had one cheap-eats afternoon in Vancouver, this is where I’d spend it.

A neighborhood plan, the way I’d actually do it. Morning: SkyTrain to Richmond for dim sum before 11. Afternoon: back downtown, walk the seawall to earn your appetite. Evening: a cheap, perfect sushi dinner in the West End, then over to Commercial Drive for gelato and an espresso among the locals. Three neighborhoods, three cuisines, maybe $50 total if you’re sensible, and you’ll have eaten the version of Vancouver that the postcard never shows you.

The salmon and the mountains are lovely. But the reason I’d live here is the $11 sushi lunch and the Richmond har gow. Don’t let the brochure talk you out of the city’s actual best meal.

Skip the cedar-planked salmon photo op. Eat the dim sum and the cheap sushi — that’s the real Vancouver.

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