Fear not, Jollibee Hive: I haven’t abandoned Jollibee Watch just yet. I’ve been dutifully passing by the corner of 5th and Market looking for signs of life and I’ve finally found one.
First, there were doors. Sure, these doors are painted all-black and lacked handles, but they were still doors. Those doors have opened now, revealing glass doors that (miraculously) have not been broken.
Also, there are windows! Walking past the building yesterday, I noticed that there are now a handful of small glass windows peeking out from the upper-left side of the building — also not broken (as of this reporting). Not that you can peer through them or anything, but still, like a butterfly that smells of grease and peach-mango pie filling, something is emerging.
Maybe, if we’re lucky, it will open by the end of 2025. (I have yet to hear back from a Jollibee spokesperson.)
In the meantime, Gazetteer subscribers can email me directly and ask for my opinions on Jollibee items. I think it is a perk on par with our fabulous hats; others might disagree. I have many thoughts, chief among them that I think the TikTok trend of wrapping Jollibee rice with fried chicken skin is MacArthur grant-level genius.
That said, I cannot comment on their recently-dropped Korean BBQ-flavored chicken, a collaboration with the increasingly ubiquitous-around-SF girl group Katseye. I hope that that will still be around by the time the Market Street Jollibee opens. Or, you know, I could just make the trek to Daly City or Alameda, but where’s the fun in that?
