The blog
I started writing these because I was answering the same questions one text message at a time. Where to take a visiting parent for dim sum. Whether the night market is worth the parking. What is still open on a wet Sunday in February. The long answers live here, and they are written for people who are going this weekend, not for people planning a trip next year.
Written and checked by
Nell Vanderveen
28 guides published
Every guide comes from going. I rank places, I tell you what the ranking is based on, and when I have not been back since somewhere changed hands I put that in writing instead of hoping you do not notice. Some of it is logistics: parking, the hour the lineup starts, which places take cash only, how to feed eight people on a Saturday without a booking. Some of it is me being opinionated about lunch.
The one rule I hold to is that the guides cover the whole city, including the half that is harder to write about.
Newest
The last long weekend of summer is the one this city is best at: the heat breaks, the light drops, and the berry season plays out its final rows. How to spend Labour Day here without wasting the Monday.
Notes from the dike
A guide that likes everything is useless. So I rank things, I say why, and I tell you when I haven't been back since the owners changed.
More from the blog
The newest guide sits at the top. I go back and rewrite the older ones when something changes on the ground.
Four independent coffee counters worth the drive, ranked, with the real distinguishing reason for each. Plus an honest note on what a town of nineteen thousand people can and cannot support.
Osprey Village looks like it should hold a dozen restaurants. It holds a handful. An honest short list for a walk on the dike and a meal afterwards.
Harris Road between 119th Avenue and the Lougheed is the only genuinely walkable commercial strip in Pitt Meadows. A walk up it, south to north, with the businesses worth stopping at.
Osprey Village is one short row of shopfronts under townhouses, facing the Fraser and the dike trail. A walk through it, and back up Bonson Road, and what is actually in the row.
Somerset is houses, a park and a school, with no commercial anything inside it. Here is where its boundaries actually are and where the people who live there go for everything else.
Two dedicated pizza places, ranked with the actual reasons, plus what to do with the rest of your pizza nights in a town this size.
North of the Alouette the city turns into reclaimed farmland, and the road keeps going until it reaches Pitt Lake. The route, the stops worth making on the way, and what it is like out there.
Osprey Village is two streets of shopfronts on the Fraser at the south end of Pitt Meadows. What is actually in it, how it is laid out, and why the dike trail behind it is the real reason to go.
The farmland is not turning into subdivisions, everyone will get your address wrong, and the clinic list is the thing people leave too late. What I actually tell people who are about to move here.
Meadowtown Centre holds most of the retail floor space in the city, and almost all of it is national chains. How the site works, which independent businesses are inside it, and what it still cannot do for you.
Pitt Meadows has more hair chairs than a city of nineteen thousand has any right to. A short guide to the salons, studios and barbershops worth booking, grouped by the kind of cut you actually want.
Tips and corrections
Somewhere I missed, or something I got wrong?
I read everything that comes in. If a place has closed, changed hands, or is simply better than I gave it credit for, tell me and I'll go back and eat there again.