Seafood City Opened TODAY at Westfield Shoppingtown Southcenter

Today marked the much-anticipated(at least from what I gathered from Facebook) opening of Seafood City at Westfield Shoppingtown Southcenter. I've been hearing about this for a few weeks now, but until going there today I couldn't really picture a grocery store inside a shopping mall. It's common in other parts of the world, but I've never seen it done here.

Today was the first day of the soft open, grand opening is on 7/22. The parking lot was full; I had to park all the way in the very far corner of the mall. When I went in I was amazed to see so many people everywhere.

Here in the south end of the greater Seattle area we have many Asian supermarkets. Some have mainly a Japanese focus, some sell mostly Korean goods, and others focus on Chinese, Southeast Asian or Indian foods. This is the first Philipino market I've ever seen, and so far it is being very enthusiastically recieved.

You'll know why they call it Seafood City right when you walk in from the outside entrance - they have an enormous fresh fish section with coolers full of whole fish, packaged fish and other meats.

Of course, I went there to check out the tea section. I felt it was...meh. Mostly tea bags and teas at low price points. But they had quite a nice selection of canned and PET-bottled teas.

They've also got many different types of tapioca, gelatin and agar-agar for desserts and bubble teas.

The spices look great and are very reasonably priced. In fact, most items here are.

They have loads of lumpia, an entire aisle freezer full.

There were rows and rows of chicharrones too...if my cat Fluffy were alive he would be licking his lips at the sight...

They had a nice gift/sundries section too, with very cute yet inexpensive items like jewelry...

and fun, summery bags. They also had a rather large selection of hospital scrubs, oddly enough.

Excuse me?

What did you just call me?!

(I know that Tagalog has many Spanish words incorporated into the language. I wonder if they have the same meaning?)

Anyway, there's also an ample produce section with all sorts of vegetables one would find in an Asian market; and a restaurant serving Philipino food. That place was very popular tonight, there was a line that snaked all the way out into the mall. Speaking of which, there will be more eateries opening up right outside of the mall entrance to Seafood City. There's lots of buzz about Jollibee, a burger place that people seem to be fond of; Tokyo Tokyo; Chowking; Red Ribbon Bakeshop and Valerio's Bakeshop.

I am so very pleased that we have this new business in our community. I am still amazed that I will now be able to go to the mall and not only get mall shopping done, but will also be able to go grocery shoppinng at Seafood City. We eat a mostly Asian diet so this is great for our family. It was nice to see all of the buzz and excitement going on in there tonight, I can tell this business model will be successful.

I also can't wait for the bakery to open so that I can get a fresh Taro(Ube) Cake!!