Take the escalator to the third floor of City Center at 2675 Geary Boulevard and you reach a 50,000-square-foot space that had been empty for close to a decade. Before the produce aisles and the crab tanks there is a coffee counter. It pours black sesame and ube lattes and sells Portuguese egg tarts, custard-filled mochi buns and layered "mille" bread flavored with pandan. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that this T&T Supermarket, which opened on Thursday, Nov. 5, is the first in the chain to have a café.
That detail sets this store apart from a long list of new grocery openings. T&T runs 37 stores in Canada and two in Washington state, and its first California store opened in San Jose in June. The Geary Boulevard store was laid out with a full-service café, a hot bar, a bakery and made-to-order counters. For Laurel Heights and Jordan Park, at the southern edge of the neighborhood, that layout makes it a place for a weekday lunch or an afternoon coffee as much as a place to stock the pantry.
A grocery store with a coffee bar at the front
KRON4 describes the San Francisco location as the first T&T in the U.S. with a full-service café. CEO Tina Lee told the station her pick was the Black Sesame Latte, adding that the café can make it with protein milk. The baked goods come from T&T's own kitchen, according to the Chronicle, and the hot food area has a fresh soy milk dispenser.
The bakery case also carries a cake made for this city. It is a mousse replica of City Hall, white with a grey dome flavored with black sesame. Lee handed one to Mayor Daniel Lurie at the opening celebration, and the store sells it for $10. That makes it one of the more affordable ways to bring something distinctly San Franciscan to a dinner party this season.
The counters worth knowing
Past the café, the floor is organized into prepared-food stations. Each one works as a stop on its own, and few people on a quick lunch run will visit all of them. The table below collects what the Chronicle and SFGATE reported from opening week. Prices appear only where a reporter recorded them.
| Counter | What it serves | Reported price |
|---|---|---|
| Café | Black sesame and ube lattes, Portuguese egg tarts, mochi buns, pandan mille bread | $2.50 per egg tart |
| Bakery | Fruit-topped cakes, City Hall mousse cake | $10 for the City Hall cake |
| Dim sum kiosk | Jumbo shrimp dumplings, vegetable steamed buns | $6.99 for four dumplings; $5 for two buns |
| Made-to-order | Fan tuan, Taiwanese rice rolls, "Papa Chicken" | Not reported |
| Hot bar | Beef brisket with daikon, blanched yu choy sprouts, bear-shaped pulled pork bao, noodles, fried rice, soup | Not reported |
| Barbecue station | Roast duck, barbecue pork, soy sauce chicken, to-go Peking duck kits | Not reported |
SFGATE's opening-day account singled out the vegetable steamed bun, filled with shiitake mushrooms, carrots and cabbage. Its reporter wrote that the dumplings and buns were as good as those at her usual bakery in Oakland Chinatown. Papa Chicken is the deep-fried, butterflied chicken that went viral online. The hot bar's pulled pork bao is shaped like a bear and filled with slow-cooked pork, pickled greens and peanuts.
The grocery floor behind these counters is large. The Chronicle counts 200 kinds of vegetables and 100 kinds of fruit in produce, including fuzzy squash, honey pomelo and malunggay leaves. Seafood tanks hold live Dungeness crab, lobster, catfish and silver carp, and the meat case includes Wagyu beef. The freezers carry T&T's private-label soup dumplings and handmade potstickers. Anyone planning a holiday table with whole crab or Peking duck can now shop for both a short drive from California Street.
How the third floor went dark, and how fast it came back
The neighborhood's long wait for this space helps explain the attention the opening received. Best Buy closed at City Center in 2017. Whole Foods signed a 20-year lease in 2019 and then spent years on permitting delays before it and the property owner, Acadia Realty Trust, agreed to end the lease in January 2025. T&T took the space that March.
From there the timeline moved quickly. SFGATE reports that Lee raised her concerns about permitting directly with Mayor Lurie, who promised his team's help. She told the outlet the store's permitting took four months, "the fastest approval that I've had in the United States so far." The doors opened a year and eight months after the lease was signed. Speaking to the crowd at the pre-opening celebration, the mayor said, "There's a lot of history in this location, not all of it good," according to the Chronicle. Supervisor Stephen Sherrill was among the roughly 100 guests.
Opening day reflected that history. SFGATE described lion dancers, drums and hundreds of people in line, some from as early as 4 a.m., for the 9 a.m. opening. The longest line inside formed at the fan tuan counter. The first 300 customers each day received a free gift from Nov. 5 through Nov. 8, so that promotion has ended.
Making it part of the week
The hours suit a café as well as a grocery store. KRON4 reports that T&T is open every day from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. That covers an early latte before work and a late stop for dumplings after a long day.
Getting there without a car is simple. SFMTA lists these lines at the corner:
- 38 Geary and 38R Geary Rapid at Geary Boulevard and Masonic Avenue
- 43 Masonic at Masonic Avenue and Geary Boulevard
The 43 runs along Masonic, the eastern edge of Laurel Heights, so it connects the neighborhood's side streets to the City Center entrance.
T&T is also one stop in a center with other errands. Acadia's City Center page names Target and T&T as the center's two anchors, and KRON4 places the grocery next to Target. The landlord's leasing roster lists Chagee Modern Tea House, Chipotle, Subway, F45, European Wax Center, Bright Horizons, AT&T, Bank of America and BMO Bank among its tenants. KRON4 notes a Tesla Supercharger on the property as well. A Saturday could include a class at F45, a stop at Target and a coffee upstairs, all in one trip.
Parking arrangements at a center this busy can change, so check the signs on site before planning a long visit.
The only one in the city
T&T is still growing in the Bay Area. The Chronicle reports a Newark store planned for next winter in a former Macy's, which at 72,600 square feet will be the chain's largest in California. A Millbrae store is planned for summer or fall 2027 in a former Lucky Supermarket. Neither is in San Francisco. For now, Geary and Masonic has the only T&T in the city and the only café in the chain.
Lee explained the choice of location to SFGATE: "If you're going to be in California, you have to be in San Francisco." The store that resulted puts its café counter first, and it sits at the corner of a neighborhood whose daily errands have long centered on Laurel Village.
If you are thinking about what the reopened corner at Geary and Masonic means for your own home, Nob Hill Compass is glad to talk it through. Request a Confidential Consultation.
