Chickenjoy will be spreading through the East Bay starting this month. San Francisco, however, will have to wait.
Superfans of Jollibee, the Filipino cult-favorite restaurant chain known for serving arguably the best fast-food fried chicken in the U.S., have been hungrily waiting years for the opening of a downtown San Francisco location.
Meanwhile, just 14 months after the chain confirmed its plans for an outpost in Alameda, the East Bay city is officially opening its destination for crunchy chicken, hot-dog-topped spaghetti, and flaky peach mango pie.
The 3,191-square-foot restaurant will open in the second half of September, a spokesperson said. It will join a roster of chain restaurants — In-N-Out, Chipotle, and Panda Express — at the open-air Alameda Landing shopping center just off the Webster Street Tube.
The Alameda location marks Jollibee’s 11th Bay Area opening. The chain operates restaurants in Brentwood, Concord, Daly City, Hayward, Milpitas, San Jose, South San Francisco, Union City, and Vallejo.
But San Francisco remains Jollibee-less. The city’s location has been in the works since 2020, when the company filed applications to take over a vacant retail space on Market and Fifth streets, near BART’s Powell Street Station.
According to city records, plans have been approved for the conversion of a former Payless ShoeSource, expected to cost more than $1 million. As of December 2023, the restaurant appeared to be inching closer to its hotly anticipated debut: Construction was underway, and the company had a job listing for a supervisor — though the posting remains active 10 months later.
The Standard reached out to Jollibee for an update on its San Francisco restaurant but did not get a response. The city did have a Jollibee at one point; the location in SoMa closed in 2011.
The company, which operates 76 restaurants in the U.S., is famous for its Filipino-American menu, which includes the Chickenjoy fried chicken; Jolly Spaghetti, covered in a ketchup sauce of sweet tomato and banana, plus ground beef, hot dogs, and cheese; and Palabok Fiesta, a Filipino noodle dish dressed in garlic sauce, with pork, shrimp, and eggs.
Sometimes called “the McDonald’s of the Philippines,” Jollibee also serves deep-fried peach mango pies, similar to the American company’s popular apple-filled desserts.