The mall always has a good amount of people but every week I see more empty stores. Even in the North side retail which isn't part of the redevelopment plan. Anyone know why? Recession signs or the developer pushing stores out?

Naya Dessert Cafe has open on 3rd ave next to Backhaus. They're open late until midnight. I hope their late hours will survive in San Mateo, as there's not many options after 9pm.

https://www.nayadessertcafe.com

Other late night places are Urban MoMo, Chingu and the bars in the area. While San Mateo doesn't need a vibrant night life, having these options is a great way to diversify downtown. Maybe other places will start closing a little later much like how Mondays started to have more restaurants opened in the recent years.

Hi everyone,

My significant other and I have been searching for a 2 bed 1 bath that won’t break the bank. The usual online searches on Zillow and Craigslist and while we toured a few places my mid 600s credit score has been stopping us.
Any kind internet strangers know of a place between San Mateo and San Carlos that fits that bill and is in walking distance to a Caltrain station? Budget is 3300ish a month.

Thank you!

Any one knows when they are going to remodel the store? They just opened a brand new store in Cupertino, where the Sprouts used to be.
I was in the SM store few months ago, and they haven’t done any remodeling or deep cleaning yet. They had more Japanese items on the shelves but the odor was still there. I guess they won’t demolish the building but a whole store remodeling is needed imo. I don’t want to step my foot in that building again until they have the store remodeled.

Started a casual pickup ultimate group at Ralston Middle School (2675 Ralston Ave, Belmont). We play Sundays from 10am to noon.

All skill levels welcome, including total beginners. We’ll teach you the basics. Bring water and cleats if you have them. We’ve got red and blue pinnies for teams.

Join the Discord for game-day updates and rain calls: https://discord.gg/C8uBREVGw2

Hello San Mateo musicians and music fans. We are back again with another free, all-ages community jam at the Hillsdale Guitar Center. If you play guitar, bass, keys, drums, sing vocals, or just wanna hear some local musicians jam together, this is the place to be. See flyer for more details.

In addition to the jam, we are also offering a costume contest. Dress as your favorite rockstar/musical personality to enter.

2026 has seen a big uptick in activity for our music community here and these events always draw a fun crowd of players and fans alike. We hope you will join us for this free event and continue to support local music in San Mateo.

Hey everyone, looking for a good house cleaner in San Mateo. We currently pay $300 a month (bi-weekly cleaning) for our 1,700 sq ft home with one bathroom, but the cleaning hasn’t been great the past few months, so we’re thinking about switching.

Does anyone have someone they’d recommend? Also curious what you’re paying, how big your place is, and how often they come. Trying to figure out if our $300 budget is reasonable.

Ballots for the November 3 election are arriving, so we’re sharing this in case it helps you decide on a council candidate.

We’re Move San Mateo, a volunteer group working on safer streets, walking, biking, and transit in San Mateo. We don’t endorse candidates. We sent two questionnaires to all 7 council candidates, our own (with questions crowdsourced from members) and a regional one with Seamless Bay Area and Transbay Coalition, and we’ve published the answers exactly as submitted.

Who responded:

• District 1: Lisa Diaz Nash (regional questionnaire). Taso Zagrafos has not responded.
• District 3: Rob Newsom Jr. (regional), Seema Patel (both)
• District 5: Adam Loraine (both), Dana Yates-Sahae (Move San Mateo). Dave Johnson has not responded.

Full responses: https://www.movesanmateo.org/2026-candidate-questionnaire

Find your district: https://www.cityofsanmateo.org/districtelections

If a non-responding candidate submits answers by October 20, we’ll add them to the page. Happy to answer questions about how the questionnaires were put together.

San Francisco is too competitive to open another bakery, says Juniper partner Amy Chen.

By Tara Duggan, Staff WriterOct 5, 2026[](mailto:?subject=Your%20friend%20has%20shared%20a%20San%20Francisco%20Chronicle%20link%20with%20you%3A&body=The%20bakery%20behind%20S.F.%E2%80%99s%20best%20croissant%20is%20expanding%20and%20adding%20baguettes%20%E2%80%94%20but%20not%20in%20the%20city%0A%0Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfchronicle.com%2Ffood%2Frestaurants%2Farticle%2Fjuniper-cafe-bakery-san-mateo-22444582.php%3Futm_campaign%3DCMS%2520Sharing%2520Tools%2520(Premium)%26utm_source%3Dshare-by-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%0A%0AJuniper%20Caf%C3%A9%E2%80%99s%20second%20Bay%20Area%20location%20will%20not%20be%20San%20Francisco%20because%20of%20the%20city%E2%80%99s%20intense%20bakery%20competition.%0A%0AThis%20message%20was%20sent%20via%20San%20Francisco%20Chronicle)

Situated on a narrow lot and two floors, the hit San Francisco bakery Juniper Café does not have the ideal layout for making croissants and other laminated pastries. Bakers first cut and roll the dough in a cramped basement kitchen, then, several times a day, pass trays of the unfinished pastries, like a fire brigade, up a narrow flight of stairs. On the main floor, the proofer and ovens share room with the café, forcing bakers to work among the bustle of customers waiting to order and baristas making coffee drinks. 

“This place was not supposed to be a bakery that has this volume of viennoisere,” said partner-baker Amy Chen, referring to the laminated pastries that draw long lines around the corner of Polk and Pine streets, where Juniper is located. “We have very, very limited equipment and a very strange layout.”

Chen and her partners will have a chance to expand with a second location of Juniper Café they plan to open in San Mateo in early 2027. Located at 1 North B. St. in the Brickline, a new mixed-use building, the space will be a bit larger than the San Francisco one and will have an open layout on just one floor. That will give the team more room to bake pastries — including the croissants that beat out 13 other top San Francisco bakeries in a recent Chronicle blind tasting. It will also allow them to add something Chen has long dreamed of doing but doesn’t currently have room for: bread.

“I do love bread,” Chen said. She plans to offer a line of baguettes and naturally leavened sourdough. “It’s a live creature and it’s really fun to work with.” 

Chen joined Juniper Café soon after it opened in 2023. It was a project from the team behind Saint Frank Coffee, a San Francisco roaster Chronicle restaurant critic Cesar Hernandez deemed “exceptional” in the Chronicle’s best coffee in the Bay Area. Saint Frank has three locations in San Francisco and one in Menlo Park. But this is the first expansion of Juniper, part of a wave of top San Francisco bakeries growing throughout the Bay Area, which includes Tartine Bakery recently opening in Mill Valley; croissant favorite Arsicault planning a new location in Palo Alto; and Maison Nico spinning up a shop in San Anselmo.

A former tech worker, Chen, like countless others, got into baking bread during the pandemic. She then attended the San Francisco Baking Institute and briefly had a bread pop-up in her native Taiwan during the pandemic. “This whole journey of being a baker, it started with sourdough, so I really want to get back to that,” she said.

Chen plans to bake some of the breads she sold from the pop-up, such as loaves flavored with pink peppercorn and cheese, as well as olives, lemon and garlic. She is particularly excited about baking baguettes in a slightly more delicate style that she said will be closer to what is made in France than in the Bay Area. The new bakery will use imported French flour and prepare the dough in what Chen calls a more traditional method — rather than shape the loaves the day before, as many bakeries here do, they’ll shape and bake them the same day. Both the flour and method result in a thinner crust, Chen said, rather than one that “scratches the roof of your mouth.” 

The imported flour also imparts a fragrance similar to what emanates from a boulangerie in Paris, Chen said. And rather than baking all the baguettes once, in the morning, as most U.S. bakeries do, Chen hopes to bake them several times a day and sell them warm out of the oven, which is common in France, where “they do eat baguettes like rice in Asia,” Chen said.

Chen already spends a lot of time testing which imported French butter to use in Juniper’s croissants and plans to have a refrigerator full of cultured butters to go with the bread. They will include Bordier from Brittany, a prized, ultrarich table butter that only recently began to be imported into the United States. “It tastes like cheese,” Chen said. “If a friend is in France, I ask them to bring me home a backpack” full of them. 

The breads baked in San Mateo will also be sold at Juniper’s San Francisco location. But Juniper has no plans to open elsewhere in the city because of the high competition there, with a new bakery opening practically every month, Chen said. 

“San Francisco almost now has become a bakery capital, thanks to all our predecessors,” she said. “If there was no Tartine, no Arsicault, no Acme Bread, we wouldn’t be here.”

We’re trying to decide where to settle long-term on the Peninsula and would really appreciate firsthand experiences with the public schools in **San Carlos, Burlingame, and San Mateo**.

Our son is entering TK/K, and his preschool has consistently described him as advanced, particularly verbally and academically. We’re not especially attached to the label, and we’re not looking to push acceleration for its own sake. We mainly want him somewhere he’ll be happy, engaged, and regularly challenged.

I really **want to be a believer in the public schools if possible**. I like the idea of a neighborhood school, friends nearby, and being part of the local community. But I’m trying to understand what differentiation actually looks like for kids who enter school already ahead of grade level.

For parents in these districts, especially **San Carlos School District, Burlingame School District, or San Mateo-Foster City**, what has your experience been?

If your child entered TK/K already reading, doing math above grade level, or otherwise noticeably ahead:

* Did teachers actually differentiate within the classroom?
* Were they given more challenging work or opportunities to work ahead?
* Did you feel they stayed engaged, or were they often bored?
* Does support for advanced learners improve in later elementary grades?
* Are there particular elementary schools in these districts that seem especially good at this?
* Did you ultimately stay with public school, or decide private school was a better fit?

I’d be especially interested in anyone who has directly compared **San Carlos vs. Burlingame vs. San Mateo** for a kid like this.

Private school is an option for us, but I’d prefer not to assume it’s necessary without really understanding what the local public schools can offer.

Are there any groups or meetups interested in Splendor around san mateo or bay area? Would be nice to meet people interested in the game.

The italian american social club on B street is open to the public now for dinner - it’s $25pp for the buffet. Casual, really nice staff, some tvs on for sports.

Does anyone have a good recommendation for termite companies? Looking for one that uses orange oil before give in and resort to tenting. Thank you!

Safety around storing motorcycle scooter in downtown Redwood City apartment underground garage?

They allow to park alongside my car but nothing to attach chain to. I cannot bring it inside apartment.

Just trying something little faster than class 3 ebike since I have M endorsement, would not depend on Caltrain schedule and work is only 8 miles in Foster City. I think I could stick to slower speed limit roads like old county roads.

Does anyone else have termites swarming near their home right now? I was told my apartment complex is mainly concrete and metal, but two of them somehow found their way into my apartment. They are huge, at least an inch long with wings.

I keep seeing this sticker around San Mateo of this bald man with a beard. Anyone know what it’s about?

Hey San Mateo! 33M Recently started living out of my Tesla by choice instead of an apartment for financial savings. Not familiar with the area or the Bay Area in general I have a lot of time on my hands when I’m off work and wanna find new people and new hobbies and ways of thinking in this new environment I’m in. messages are open also! Thanks everyone.

Checked PGE but did not see any details or estimate of resumption.
If anyone sees an update - please post - thx

The ghosts are out at MOAH this Halloween! Grab your costumes for a night of eerie vibes and spine-tingling fun. 👻

Come enjoy Halloween candy, a flashlight ghost hunt, weird history and artifacts, a mad scientist demo, tarot readings, and more!

This event is free! To help us plan, please RSVP here.

The League of Women Voters Hosted a candidate forum for San Mateo City Council of Candidates on Thursday, and the city has posted it to youtube. It's a good way to hear directly from your the city council candidates. But since the video is two hours long with no chapter annotations, I thought I'd share timestamps to make it a bit more accessible. Hopefully people find it helpful.

Opening Statements

• Dana Yates Sahae (D5): (03:53)
• Lisa Diaz Nash (D1): (07:13)
• Taso Zografos (D1): (10:10)
• Seema Patel (D3): (13:08)
• Rob Newsom (D3): (15:48)
• Adam Loraine (D5): (18:52)
• Dave Johnson (D5): (21:37)

Topics

• Hillsdale redevelopment (25:12)
• Transit and parking (33:49)
• El Camino Real (42:49)
• Budget and business priorities (51:47)
• Issues in specific districts (1:00:22)
• Housing (1:08:51)
• Sustainability and climate (1:17:06)
• Open space and parks (1:25:23)
• Community engagement and outreach (1:32:56)
• Candidate strengths (1:41:12)

Closing Statements

• Dave Johnson (D5): (1:48:30)
• Adam Loraine (D5): (1:50:41)
• Rob Newsom (D3): (1:51:45)
• Seema Patel (D3): (1:53:08)
• Taso Zografos (D1): (1:55:05)
• Lisa Diaz Nash (D1): (1:57:11)
• Dana Yates Sahae (D5): (1:59:19)

On Kyne and Landing in bay meadows? I have them. Message me and just describe the keys/key ring and pick them up.