Koi Palace Is Moving Into the Mall. That Tells You Something About Daly City Right Now.

"By creating a dynamic environment where shopping, dining, and socializing converge, we will enhance the appeal and vibrancy of our destination," Serramonte Center general manager John Colucci said back in 2024, previewing the changes coming to the mall. It reads like standard shopping-center press copy, the kind you skim past on your way to the actual news. Except this time the receipts back it up, and the clearest one isn't a press release at all. It's the fact that Koi Palace, a restaurant that has spent thirty years being the place people drove across the Peninsula to eat at, is packing up its own building to move inside a mall.

That's the detail worth sitting with if you live here. Restaurants that already pull crowds don't usually need a mall's foot traffic. When one moves in anyway, it means the mall has stopped being a backdrop and started being the destination.

A Mall Built for Errands, Not Dinner

For most of its life, Serramonte Center has been an anchor-store mall in the plainest sense: Macy's, Target, TJ Maxx, Old Navy, Dick's Sporting Goods, Nordstrom Rack. You went for a return, a pair of shoes, a gym session at Crunch Fitness. Dinner happened somewhere else, usually along Mission Street or out at one of Daly City's standalone restaurants.

That started to change when a longtime JCPenney, vacant since the store closed in 2019, sat empty for roughly six years on the mall's east side. What eventually went into that space was the first real signal that Serramonte's owner, Regency Centers, was betting on food rather than another apparel chain.

Jagalchi Proved the Bet

That bet was Jagalchi, a 75,000-square-foot Korean food complex that opened March 28, 2025. It's not a grocery store with a snack counter bolted on. It houses a full seafood and butcher counter, a gluten-free bakery called Basquia, and POGU, a 160-seat restaurant helmed by Tony Yoo, the first chef in Korea to earn a Michelin star.

The opening weekend numbers make the case better than any adjective could: more than 49,000 people came through between that Friday morning and Sunday evening. That's not a soft-launch crowd. That's a mall pulling regional visitors the way a destination does, not the way a shopping center usually does.

Jagalchi was the proof of concept. Koi Palace is the confirmation.

Why the Koi Palace Move Is the Real Story

Koi Palace has operated at 365 Gellert Boulevard since 1996, when brothers Willy and Ronny Ng opened it. Over the decades it became one of the Bay Area's most recognized Cantonese dim sum rooms, earning multiple James Beard Foundation semifinalist nods for Willy as Outstanding Restaurateur and for the restaurant itself as Outstanding Restaurant. People don't need convincing to eat there. They already do, in significant numbers, at its current location.

So when a restaurant like that agrees to relocate into a shopping center, the direction of the relationship flips. Koi Palace isn't borrowing Serramonte's foot traffic. It's choosing to build its next chapter inside an ecosystem someone else is now curating. The new space will be nearly double the size of the original, roughly 20,000 square feet with seating for 760 to 800 guests, designed around Chinese art, LED projections, and a koi pond. That's not a downsizing move or a survival move. That's a restaurant treating the mall as the better address.

One thing worth knowing if you're planning a dim sum trip this fall: as of this writing in late August 2026, Koi Palace's listing on Serramonte's own directory still reads "Coming Soon," and the original Gellert Boulevard location is still operating on its regular hours. The move has been publicly discussed since early 2025, when early reports floated both a December 2025 opening and a first-quarter-2026 target. Both windows have now passed without a confirmed opening. If you're headed there for a banquet or a birthday dinner, call ahead or check current hours before you drive over, because the transition hasn't closed the old doors yet.

The Chains Are Coming Too, and That's Worth Noticing

Koi Palace won't be moving in alone. According to a Serramonte Center spokesperson, five more restaurants are in the pipeline for the property: The Cheesecake Factory, taking over the former Buffalo Wild Wings space; Fogo de Chão, opening its third Bay Area location; Haidilao, also opening its third Bay Area location after existing spots in Fremont and Cupertino; Marugame Udon; and Kin No Katsu, which will be opening its first Bay Area location anywhere, making Serramonte the debut spot rather than an expansion.

Look at that list and a pattern shows up that's worth naming directly. With the exception of Koi Palace and Jagalchi, this is a chain-driven buildout, not an organic wave of independent openings. That's not a criticism. It means Regency Centers is executing a deliberate repositioning of the property, backed by leases with established brands that have the capital to build out large-format spaces fast. For residents, the practical upside is predictability: consistent hours, consistent quality, a wider range of cuisines within a five-minute walk of each other. The tradeoff is that a mall food court, even a very good one, isn't where you go looking for a surprise.

Two Food Scenes, Not One

The mall buildout doesn't erase what's already here. It sits next to it. A few blocks away on Mission Street, the restaurants that have anchored Daly City's food identity for decades are still doing exactly what they've always done. Original Joe's Westlake has been serving Italian-American comfort food since 1956, in a multi-room dining room with the same leather chairs and bow-tied servers it's had for generations. Pho Huynh Hiep 3, known locally as Kevin's Noodle House, still turns out a phở đặc biệt loaded with rare steak, brisket, and tendon that regulars will tell you is the best in the city. Kan Kiin covers Thai classics with a brunch menu locals treat as a genuine reason to get up early on a weekend.

None of that closes because Serramonte opens a Fogo de Chão. What's actually happening is that Daly City now runs two parallel food scenes: the legacy, family-run corridor along Mission Street, and a newly assembled dining wing inside the mall built on a mix of destination-worthy independents and national chains. A resident who wants variety doesn't have to choose a side. A Saturday can start with a bowl of noodles at Kevin's and end with grab-and-go banchan at Jagalchi, and both stops are true to what this city actually is.

The Festival Is the Third Data Point

If the Serramonte buildout were the only thing happening, you could read it as the city's dining energy shifting away from its street-level roots toward mall retail. But the Top of the Hill Festival tells a different story about where investment is going on the other side of town.

The festival returns for its third year on Saturday, October 17, 2026, on Mission Street at John Daly Boulevard, the same intersection that's anchored Daly City's small business corridor for years. It debuted in 2024 with roughly 10,000 attendees and 27 community partners. By its 2026 run, organizers expect around 20,000 people across more than half a mile of festival grounds, a genuine doubling in two years.

That growth curve matters because it means the city isn't choosing between the mall and Mission Street. It's investing in both at the same time. One is a private developer's capital-driven repositioning of a shopping center. The other is a municipally backed street festival built to spotlight the small businesses that have always defined the Top of the Hill area. Put together, they point to the same conclusion from two different directions: Daly City's food and retail identity is expanding, not consolidating around a single location.

What This Means If You Live Here

The short version: this fall gives you more reasons to stay local than Daly City has offered in years, and they come from two genuinely different sources. If you want the polished, newly built version, Serramonte's east wing is worth checking on with some regularity between now and year end, since Koi Palace's opening date has moved before and could again. If you want the version that's been getting it right for decades, Mission Street hasn't gone anywhere, and the Top of the Hill Festival on October 17 is the single best day to see why that corridor still matters.

Either way, pay attention to which version of Daly City you're rooting for. It's rare for a market to build out two competing food identities at once instead of letting one crowd out the other.

If you're weighing what a neighborhood like this means for a move, a sale, or simply understanding how a place is changing before you commit to it, James Kil tracks these shifts across San Francisco and the Peninsula as part of the day-to-day work of understanding these markets. Schedule a free consultation if you want a read on what a corridor like this means for your own plans.