The New Serramonte: What's Actually Open Now at Daly City's Mall

For six years, the biggest box at Serramonte Center sat dark. The JCPenney on the east side closed in 2019, and if you drove past on Callan or Serramonte Boulevard, the shell was the first thing you saw. That box is no longer a box. It is a Korean food emporium with a fish market, a food hall, and a bakery, and the Cantonese restaurant that put Daly City on the national dim sum map just moved in next door.

If you have lived here more than a few years, you know Serramonte as the place you went for a Target run and maybe a Panda Express. That version of the mall is gone. The east side has become the anchor of Daly City's Asian food scene, and it changed the calculus of where locals actually spend a Saturday.

The east side, before and after

Here is what changed in a single stretch of the mall, in about eighteen months.

The longtime JCPenney at the Serramonte mall permanently closed in 2019, and the building on the east side of Serramonte had been vacant for about six years before Jagalchi took the space. Koi Palace took over space on the east side of the mall that was previously occupied by a Wet Seal, Subway and Starbucks, and the Starbucks relocated next to the Chick-fil-A.

Jagalchi is the piece that changed the weekend

Jagalchi is not another supermarket. It is a Korean food emporium that combines groceries, prepared food, and a full sit-down dining floor under one roof. It joins the two existing Korean supermarkets in the area: H Mart in San Francisco by the Daly City border, and Kukje Supermarket in Daly City on Junipero Serra Boulevard.

The bigger point is what Jagalchi did to the mall's gravity. Before, the east side of Serramonte was where you parked if the main lot was full. Now it is the reason people drive in. Serramonte's general manager put it plainly when the deal was announced. "I believe that introducing Jagalchi to our shopping center will elevate the experience of our visitors," John Colucci said, framing the move as an attempt to make the mall a place where shopping, dining, and socializing overlap.

If you already live here, the practical effect is that weekend errands have collapsed into a single trip. Groceries, a hot lunch, and whatever else you needed at Target or Daiso are all in the same 80-acre lot.

Koi Palace moved across the parking lot, and doubled

The bigger story for longtime residents is Koi Palace. The original restaurant opened at 365 Gellert Boulevard in 1996 and became the anchor of Cantonese dining on the Peninsula. It stayed there for nearly thirty years. Then it moved a few hundred yards into the mall.

The new footprint is not a lateral move. The new location spans an impressive 20,000 square feet, nearly double the size of the original Daly City restaurant, with seating for 760 to 800 guests, designed to accommodate large banquets, family gatherings, and private parties. The new Koi Palace flagship is located next to the Korean food emporium Jagalchi, which puts two of the most trafficked Asian food destinations in San Mateo County within a shared corridor.

A few things to know if you are a regular:

• The old Gellert location is closed. The move did not result in a temporary closure — the original Daly City flagship closed the same day the new location opened.
• The menu did not change, but the format did. The partnership signals a shift for Koi Palace, which is aiming to move in a "more casual dining direction," co-owner Willy Ng said.
• The recognition is not marketing. Koi Palace was founded by brothers Willy and Ronny Ng in 1996, their first restaurant opened in Daly City, and it has received James Beard Foundation nominations, with Willy named a semifinalist for "Outstanding Restaurateur" in 2020 and 2022 and Koi Palace itself a semifinalist for "Outstanding Restaurant" in 2018 and 2024.
• You can now get their dim sum without a reservation. Their pork and vegetable potstickers, steamed barbecue pork buns, vegetarian spring rolls, crispy shrimp dumplings and lava buns are available at all 13 Local Kitchens locations in Northern California.

The last point matters more than it sounds. If you have ever tried to walk into Koi Palace on a Saturday around 11:30, you know the wait. The Local Kitchens partnership is a release valve.

What sits next to them

The rest of the food lineup around Jagalchi and Koi Palace is a mix of familiar mall food and the kind of Asian-leaning tenants Serramonte has been quietly stacking for years. The mall's tenants include MOD Pizza, Panda Express, and Yoshi Ramen & Sushi. The broader mix features Macy's, Nordstrom Rack, Target, Old Navy, Ross Dress for Less, TJ Maxx, Daiso, H&M, Dick's Sporting Goods, Dave & Buster's, California Fish Grill, and Buffalo Wild Wings.

Daiso is the tell. The mall is popular with Asians, and openings in recent years have included Asian retailers such as Daiso. Regency Centers, the mall's owner, has spent the last decade leaning into that base rather than fighting for a generic suburban shopper who was never coming back.

For anyone comparing Serramonte to Stonestown or Tanforan, one structural fact matters. Serramonte serves the densely populated northern San Mateo County corridor as the regional comparison-shopping format for a trade area compressed between the southern city limit of San Francisco and the retail inventory of the mid-Peninsula, with Macy's anchoring the department store position, Nordstrom Rack the off-price tier, Target the mass merchandise box, Dick's the sporting goods anchor, and Best Buy the electronics anchor — the broadest functional anchor range of any enclosed regional in the northern San Mateo County submarket. Five anchors is unusual for a mall this size, and it is a big part of why Serramonte kept its foot traffic through a decade that gutted mid-tier malls elsewhere.

The Asian grocery triangle you can now walk between

If you cook at home more than you eat out, the more useful map is the one that connects Serramonte to the two other Korean grocery destinations already in the area.

• Jagalchi, inside Serramonte on the east side, prepared food plus fish market plus groceries.
• Kukje Supermarket, on Junipero Serra Boulevard, the longtime local Korean grocery.
• H Mart, just over the San Francisco border, the largest of the three by chain footprint.

All three are within a short drive. What was a single-destination trip five years ago is now a three-stop comparison run for anyone who takes their pantry seriously. If you moved here for the food access, this is the actual reason.

You can also add 99 Ranch Market on the Serramonte side of the lot for the Chinese and pan-Asian pantry basics, which puts four full-service Asian groceries inside a two-mile radius.

What is still coming

The east-side reboot is not the end of the plan. The city approved a long-horizon expansion for the property that goes well beyond current construction. Daly City Serramonte Center, LLC is proposing to expand the existing Shopping Center over the course of approximately 10 years, and at buildout the project would add a maximum of 328,600 square feet of retail, entertainment, and restaurant space and a 65,000-square-foot medical building. Details on the city's environmental review are on the Daly City Serramonte Shopping Center Expansion page if you want the primary document.

That is the ceiling, not the floor. In the near term, what matters is that the east-side box is full, the flagship Cantonese restaurant on the Peninsula is now a mall tenant, and the parking behavior at Serramonte on a Saturday afternoon looks different than it did in 2023.

Why this matters if you already live in Daly City

The generic version of this story is that a mall got two new tenants. The Daly City version is that the city's Asian food anchor moved, and the mall it moved into is now a legitimate weekend destination instead of a stop on the way to Target.

For homeowners in Serramonte, Westlake, St. Francis Heights, and the neighborhoods along Callan and Southgate, that changes what proximity to the mall is worth. It also changes the pitch to out-of-town family. The old line about Daly City being twenty minutes from real dim sum does not apply anymore. It is here, twice the size, next to a Korean fish market.

For a longer look at how the surrounding neighborhoods sit relative to the mall and the transit corridors, our Daly City neighborhood guide breaks down what each pocket looks like on the ground. If you are weighing a move between Daly City and the next city south, our comparison on San Bruno versus Daly City covers what your money buys in each.

Curious what your own home is worth now that the east side of Serramonte looks nothing like it did two years ago? Bryan Cruz and Rey Ancheta can walk you through a current valuation and what recent buyer demand looks like block by block. Get Your Instant Home Valuation to start.