There's a lesson a minute when you explore the Asian culinary concertos of Richmond, British Columbia. Far from a regular slew of restaurants where the predictable fare of burgers and fries is served daily, this city is home to some of North America's top Asian chefs. Noodles are hand-made daily, dumplings are carefully folded and tofu is unrecognisable when it arrives fried, flavoured and accompanied by an interesting assortment of bamboo shoots and other exotic Asian greens.
To better understand some of the ingredients that appear in those dishes, I'm escorted through T&T Supermarket, a major Asian grocer in the city, by restaurateur Peter Leong, who owns Posh Restaurant.
"The Asian dining culture is all about freshness, especially when it comes to seafood," he says as we pass the live tanks. Here, oysters, crab, bullhead fish and lemon sole eye us warily from the water, as oysters, sea snails and clams compete for space in smaller containers.
Every aisle of the grocery store is stocked with products I've never seen.
The vegetable crates are filled with leafy greens carrying exotic names such as sing gua, nagaimo, chun ho, bok choi and gai-lan.
At the Osaka Supermarket deli next door, salad bowls brim with Korean cabbage, spicy tofu, pork ribs with black bean sauce and crispy green onion cakes.
To taste some of these ingredients, I follow Leong back to Posh, where his focus is exclusively on sukiyaki, roughly translated as Japanese hotpot.
Every table at the 50-seat boutique restaurant contains an infrared gas stove, upon which our waitress warms a large pot of sukiyaki sauce with Chinese cabbage. Bowls of meat and vegetables arrive quickly, and as the meal progresses we cook an assortment of bok choy, taro, konjac tofu, winter melon, yam and tong ho in it.
"This is all about local food, interactive dining and sharing," Leong says as the rich aroma of our food wafts over the table. These are all organic Asian vegetables grown locally, items you really can't find anywhere outside of Asia but here. Diners who come here for the first time have to be willing to experiment and push their culinary boundaries a little, because this is not a typical Western-style dining experience."
It's much better than that, I'm thinking as I sip on a hot tangerine lemon matha, Posh's take on Japanese green tea with kumquat.
One of Leong's key mandates was to make his restaurants "Canadian-accessible", by which he means comprehensible to English speakers.
The food and beverage menu is in English, the staff speak the language fluently and by focusing on just one dish, sukiyaki, Leong feels the meals he serves retain their authenticity.
English fluency is not something you'll find in every Asian restaurant in Richmond, a city dominated by Mandarin, Cantonese and Chinese-speaking people.
At the Shanghai River Restaurant, for example, the bill for our food arrives in Chinese. Famous for its pork soup dumplings and dim sum, or Chinese tapas, the restaurant churns out 6 000 dumplings a day, serving them with delicious salads of baby pea shoots.
Later, we take an amble through the food court of Aberdeen Centre, the newest of the three major Asian shopping malls in Richmond.
There's Tim's Dessert House with its Hong Kong-style egg balls, and Café D'Lite Express where you can taste drinks called iced honey chrysanthemum and hot barley.
Long known as the home to Vancouver International Airport, Richmond has quietly emerged as a culinary hot spot for Asian cuisine of all types. Japanese restaurants rub shoulders with establishments specialising in the tastes and textures of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia. Offering a unique assortment of dishes you'd be hard-pressed to find anywhere else outside of Asia, Richmond's culinary scene gives visitors an opportunity to immerse themselves in an utterly different dining experience that can take them straight to Asia.
But if it's charm you're after, you have to head to Steveston, the historic heart of Richmond.
Here, expect an eclectic mix of home-style coffee shops, boutiques, galleries and restaurants, a place where locals chat with fishermen on the pier and families bask in the sunshine over plates loaded with fresh fish and chips. Alive with activity, this is a village where the present seamlessly meets the past, honouring tradition and legacy while ever looking forward.
For visitors interested in experiencing the roots of the city, Steveston holds plenty of interest. A long boardwalk lines the river, providing a starting point for a leisurely bike ride from the village. Cycle east past the old cannery buildings and visit the Murakami Complex, part of the Brittania Shipyards National Heritage Site. Here, the home of the Murakami family has been preserved since its construction in 1885.
The humble abode of one of the early Japanese settlers in Steveston, this museum paints a brief portrait of their lives as fishermen and boatbuilders and the Japanese traditions they brought with them.
For the European equivalent, bike to London Heritage Farm, in the midst of an expansive floral and vegetable garden, a great place to have tea and scones after browsing through the intimate details of the London family, established here in the 1880s. The farmhouse and environs showcase their lives and farming traditions.
Back in the village, there are culinary temptations aplenty. Fish and chips is a staple that can be enjoyed in casual dining restaurants or to go, consumed in the sunshine over an inspiring view of the river. There are also old-fashioned ice cream and candy stores.
A must-see in Steveston is the Gulf of Georgia Cannery Museum, which tells the story of Richmond's thriving beginnings in 1894 as salmon central. The museum explains how the canning operations worked and what the lives of cannery workers were like.
Though the canneries have long since shut their doors, it's still possible to purchase wild salmon and shrimp directly off boats moored at the pier. Locals flock to the nearby Garry Point Park, where dogs frolic on the beach, kite boarders zip along the open fields and pedestrians and cyclists relish the sight of massive cargo ships, jet skis and pleasure vessels passing by.
Families push prams along the path and children wobble on bicycles. Executives gaze into their laptops from coffee shops, neighbours meet over croissants and men catch up on the local events at the barber.
The times have changed, but Steveston's deep roots have allowed it to maintain its dignity, welcoming locals and visitors without sacrificing its special character.