Canton Garden

Most of Chilliwack's shopping happens in Sardis, and a restaurant up in Chilliwack Proper, north of Highway 1 in the blocks between the downtown and the interchange, is working outside that footprint under a particular set of conditions. Cottonwood Centre alone runs to more than seventy tenancies, there is a second mall opposite it, and the Luckakuck Way strip between the two draws traffic from a fair stretch of the eastern valley. Dining rooms in the Sardis retail district tend to occupy strip plazas rather than a walkable frontage, which means they are easy to drive past without registering, and that the people who know them have usually been told about them rather than stumbled on them. Skowkale and Yakweakwioose sit inside the same neighborhood boundary, along with the Coqualeetza Lands, which is a useful reminder that Sardis amounts to a good deal more than its shopping.

The wider point about eating in this city is that the independent rooms are scattered rather than concentrated. The downtown has the highest density, both in the old grid and at District 1881, the newer cluster raised on the former Chilliwack Cattle Sales site. Vedder Road through Sardis and Vedder has the greatest number overall. Out in Yarrow and Rosedale a handful of places have outlasted several owners. Anyone hunting for dinner here is choosing a direction before choosing a table.