Asian Food Is Coming to Save a Mall Near You

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rom the 1990s golden age of suburban sprawl, one Bay Area mall remains iconic among Filipino Americans: Serramonte Center in Daly City, aka “Serra-Manila.” Throwback to ‘94, when Jocelyn Enriquez dominated 106.1 KMEL airwaves with her freestyle track “I’ve Been Thinking About You” — the first Pinay from my generation to make it on the radio — and Serramonte was the place to go back-to-school shopping, ask for someone’s pager number, or hard-launch a budding romance by simply holding hands in public.

In a time before cell phones and GPS, if you got lost, you always met up at the fountain in the center of the mall, which was so powerful, it gushed up to the skylight like Old Faithful every half hour. During the busy holiday season, it provided a resting place for tired shoppers and grandparents looking to entertain the kids with a shiny nickel and a wish or two.

But nostalgia couldn’t save Serramonte Center. The reality is that malls all over America have been dying for the past 25 years — pummeled by the Great Recession of 2008, mortally wounded by the rise of e-commerce via Amazon. For many of the Bay Area’s struggling malls, the pandemic was their swan song. At Serramonte, when the big box stores like Macy’s and Montgomery Ward started falling like dominoes, it was only a matter of time before the Spencer’s Gifts and Contempo Casuals followed suit. So, for years now, instead of packs of teens roaming the corridors, the mall has sat mostly empty. Its once-popular restaurants, like Pizza and Pipes and Elephant Bar or the nearby Peppermill, fell by the wayside.

In 2017, the owners even hired consultants to redesign the mall based on feng shui principles, replacing the fountain with Zen-like koi ponds and live turtles on lily pads. None of it made much of a difference.

Now, Serramonte Center is hoping to pivot in the same direction as the small handful of Bay Area malls that are still thriving: It’s going all in on Asian food. Earlier this spring the mall welcomed Jagalchi, a glitzy Korean supermarket named after a famous fish market in Busan, sparking long lines in the spot where JCPenney once stood. And for the first time in a long time, it looked like there was hope for Serramonte to plot a comeback.

Malls all over the Bay Area – and down in Southern California too — have followed this same playbook. Stonestown Galleria on the west side of SF was the first place where I noticed it. While the retail apocalypse decimated other malls in the greater San Francisco region, from San Bruno’s ghost town Tanforan Mall to the COVID-crippled San Francisco Centre on Market Street, Stonestown has seen a resurgence.

How did it do it? For starters, when the once-beloved Olive Garden and Chevys moved out, Stonestown didn’t replace them with other similarly generic chain restaurants. Instead, it began to welcome unique Asian specialty shops that served Japanese soufflé pancakes, fresh-made udon and Taiwanese fruit teas. It even added a revolving sushi bar, complete with robot servers, to warp you to Tokyo without the need for a passport. Not only did these new restaurants provide a draw, but the long lines and limited hours at places like Matcha Cafe Maiko gave an air of exclusivity that captured shoppers’ attention.

With Asian Americans composing a third of San Francisco’s population, and thanks to Stonestown’s prime location between the Sunset District and SF State, the pivot worked. And we’ve seen other malls follow the same formula: These days, San Jose’s Westfield Valley Fair — probably the most successful mall in the Bay Area — consists almost entirely of restaurants and retail shops geared toward Asian Americans.

When I was growing up, Daly City was mainly populated by middle-class Filipino families, who I can proudly say are part of a foodie-obsessed culture. Our geographical proximity to other Asian countries means we can eat Korean BBQ, Singaporean noodles and Vietnamese pho, and wash it down with Thai iced tea — all in the course of a day. Our craving for food is international, and there is no line too long or reservation system too complicated for us to not eventually dominate. So I’m betting that Serramonte Center leaning into its Filipino customers’ insatiable appetite will be the thing that finally makes us get off our couches to pay this old-school, once-forgotten mall another visit.

In March, I was invited to Jagalchi’s press preview and got to peruse the aisles sans shoppers, noting what might attract folks from all parts of the Peninsula to its mall location. Though there is no H-Mart-style food court, the supermarket does have a Michelin-pedigreed restaurant onsite and a deli section that offers plenty of samples to try. Each area of the supermarket was spacious, with entire sections dedicated to specialty products that would be relegated to the one “ethnic” aisle at your local Safeway. It wasn’t like Pacific Super on Alemany (RIP), with its cramped aisles and pervasive fishy smell — that was actually my comfort zone.

I stuffed my face with free kimbap and bulgogi samples like only an SF public school kid could. Meanwhile, the special press dinner at the sit-down restaurant, POGU, left much to be desired (it was all cold!). So I planned on coming back when Jagalchi was actually open to see how the rest of the mall fared in comparison.

A couple weekends ago, I pulled up to Serramonte’s food court parking lot and slowly made my way toward the other side of the mall, where Jagalchi was. What I noticed were more and more Asian food businesses I hadn’t seen before. First, I grabbed a still-warm madeleine muffin from Uncle Tetsu, which specializes in Japanese cheesecakes. To its right, a sign advertised the Izumi revolving sushi bar, coming soon. And as I reached the once-famous fountain, I saw it had been replaced by a mochi donut stand, what was left of the fountain now reduced to a mere trickle. The mall is now also home to the Taiwanese bakery chain 85C, a Korean hot dog kiosk and a stand selling trendy Dubai chocolate strawberry cups. And in the mall’s southern wing, where Jagalchi is housed, I was greeted by a huge billboard for the much-heralded Koi Palace dim sum restaurant, which is moving its flagship from its Gellert Boulevard location to the mall next year, nearly doubling its seating capacity.

In short, Serramonte’s Asian pivot is already well underway.

Even on a regular weekend, Jagalchi was still bustling in comparison to the rest of Serramonte, and for now, foot traffic doesn’t seem to have increased much. Only time will tell if new businesses like the dim sum palace and the revolving sushi restaurant will draw customers to the rest of the mall, the way Stonestown’s specialty food court has.

One thing I did miss was the makeshift Sari Sari store that once stood where the mochi donut spot is now — a quaint Filipino snack stand in the center of the mall. With all the new Asian businesses moving in, none of them seem to cater specifically to the Filipino community. Moving forward, it would be nice to see some Fil-Am restaurants or dessert shops geared toward those day-one supporters.

Nostalgia aside, it’s clear that at least in the Bay Area, Asian Americans may be one of the last demographics that still loves going to the mall. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, they know how to do malls overseas in Asia, where the air-conditioned mega-complexes and adjoining grocers (and even churches!) are designed to be a one-stop shop. So this Asian food renaissance seems to be the key to bringing people back to the mall, entire families in tow.

The other day I came across an Instagram video about Serramonte Center that ran down the Asian Dad fashion you can find there, harking back to the mall’s heyday as the place to be for Filipinos like me. I was happy to be reminded that Serramonte will always have a place in Bay Area lore. May it be restored once again to its former glory — fountain be damned.

Rocky Rivera is a journalist, emcee, author and activist from San Francisco. She has released four albums through her label, Beatrock Music, and a ten-volume mixtape series with DJ Roza — her most recent album, Long Kiss Goodnight, dropped in Sept. 2024. She released her first book, entitled Snakeskin: Essays by Rocky Rivera, in 2021.