North Burnaby's New Shopping Malls

The mall at Gilmore Place is taking shape

Today I visited a friend who lives in Burnaby, which is the land of skyscrapers in Metro Vancouver. There are several towers that are over 60 stories high, many are walking distance to two SkyTrain stations, Gilmore and Brentwood. 

Like the MTR stations in Hong Kong, Gilmore and Brentwood both have shopping malls attached to them. Brentwood has The Amazing Brentwood, a large, partially open-air shopping mall, which has an airy food court offering mostly Asian food, from Japanese and Chinese to Korean, and Persian. 

It also has free-standing restaurants, and tonight I visited Bow & Stern, which is celebrating its first anniversary later this month. It offers mostly seafood dishes, and for Happy Hour (2pm-5pm, and 9pm to closing), freshly shucked oysters are $2 each! 

Meanwhile Gilmore Place is coming together now, with a few shops open like KFC, and Big Way Hot Pot will open, as well as a Thai spa, and Subway too. But my friend is really excited to hear that a T&T supermarket will open within a five-minute walk from her place!

I joked that with this Asian supermarket near here, she will never have to cook, as T&T offers not only uncooked ingredients, but cooked foods as well, including congee, roast meats, and noodles, so she has her "neighbourhood canteen" set up!

With so many people living and working in the area, and located next to the Skytrain station, it's no wonder that T&T has planned to open here, with many Asians living in the area.

However, while I was at tonight's dinner, one of the guests I ate with told me one of her friends lives in one of the nearby towers and said it was a nightmare getting up and down the elevator -- it takes 30 minutes just to get one, and when you have a dog that needs to go to the bathroom, and a wailing child, it can be pretty stressful!

Having a shoebox in the sky here doesn't sound fun at all, if there are only two elevators for so many units...