As expected, the line at a new Lansdowne Centre food court stall was running twenty people deep at lunch.
That stall is One Cafe 正斗茶記, and its Richmond expansion is now officially three addresses long.
The Hong Kong-style cafe just opened at Lansdowne Centre food court on July 16, taking over the unit that used to be Villa Vietnamese.
We walked by on day two and counted the line at roughly twenty people through the lunch rush, with the grand-opening flower stands still standing at the counter.
The menu here is basically a mirror of their other locations.
The boards run deep for a food court stall: a bolo bao series built on what the menu calls a freshly baked pineapple bun with thick cold butter, HK-style sandwiches, a French toast series, and a stirred instant noodle line built on Nissin where you pick your own sauce and your own meat.
Then there are the all-day breakfast sets, which are the reason most people are standing there.
HK-style cafe stalls like this one have been pulling long daily lines lately, built on all-day breakfast sets that land around $15 for a main, toast, eggs, and a drink.
In a food court economy where a solo lunch creeps past $20, that math travels fast.
The climb here has been quick.
One Cafe started as a single Parker Place stall in 2023, added Empire Centre, and both of those sit on No. 3 Road alongside this new one.
It has since crossed the city line into Burnaby with a Crystal Mall stall, and a second Crystal Mall unit is already in the works in the former Kingspark Good Food space.
Count them up and Lansdowne is stall number five, with a sixth on deck.
Lansdowne’s food court is having its own moment while this happens.
Roastory Asian BBQ is taking the old Katte unit with a siu mei counter, and Freshly Squeezed has a coming-soon banner up on the former My Coffee space, a stall that ran there for 15 years.
Turnover in a mall food court usually reads as decline.
Three new signs in a season reads like something else.
Expect the lines to hold for a while yet, because the brand’s other stalls have been pulling them consistently and this one opened into a mall that already had the traffic.
One Cafe Lansdowne joins Richmond’s stacking list of recent openings, alongside Toki’s matcha trailer, Watt A Truck, and Taoke.
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Address: Lansdowne Centre food court, 5300 No. 3 Road, Richmond BC