🛍 What's Open (and What's Coming) at the Village at Tacoma Mall

Dave's Hot Chicken, Supreme Dumplings, and More Anchor Tacoma Mall's Biggest Food Refresh in Years.

If you haven't paid attention to Tacoma Mall in a while, the place has been quietly rebuilding itself.

The Village at Tacoma Mall, the expansion project that's been adding outdoor-facing restaurant and retail space, has been rolling out new tenants in waves. The first big wave is now open, and the second is coming through the door.

Here's a current scorecard.

🍔 Open: Shake Shack

Shake Shack was the first of the new Village tenants to open, going live in November 2025. The New York-born modern roadside burger brand brings ShackBurgers, crinkle-cut fries, frozen custard, and the standard South Sound burger debate ("how does it stack up to Dick's, Frisko Freeze, and Lil Woody's?") to the mall corridor for the first time.

🍗 Open: Dave's Hot Chicken

The Nashville-style hot chicken chain officially opened on January 23, 2026 at 4502 S Steele St, Suite 1670 — the second restaurant to open at the Village, following Shake Shack. Founded in a Los Angeles parking lot in 2017, Dave's has grown into one of the country's most-watched fast-casual brands, with backing from Drake, Samuel L. Jackson, and other high-profile investors.

The menu is built around five heat levels (No Spice to Reaper) and a handful of formats: sliders, tenders, mac and cheese, kale slaw, fries.

Hours: Sun–Thu 10am–11pm, Fri–Sat 10am–midnight.

🥟 Open: Supreme Dumplings

Supreme Dumplings, the handmade-dumpling brand, was the first of the second wave to open. Expect xiao long bao, pan-fried dumplings, and the kind of menu that pulls a steady lunch crowd.

🍲 Already Open: Happy Lamb Hot Pot

Happy Lamb opened in April 2026 and remains the South Sound's first major hot pot restaurant. We covered the opening then; it's still drawing crowds.

🧋 Coming Soon: Gong Cha

Gong Cha, the global Taiwanese bubble tea chain (more than 1,800 locations worldwide), is part of the next wave. Watch for an opening announcement on their social channels.

🌶 Coming Soon: Simply Thai

Simply Thai is rounding out the food lineup with full-service Thai. Like Gong Cha, the opening is reported as "this summer."

🛒 The Bigger Picture

The Village expansion was scheduled to wrap up in late spring 2026. Beyond food, the project also brings new retail to Tacoma Mall's outdoor edge, including the previously announced Shoe Palace and other names.

For Tacoma, this matters for a simple reason. The mall corridor (S Steele St between 38th and 56th) has long been one of the city's biggest traffic generators but has lacked dining variety. A genuinely good food court turns the mall into an actual hangout, not just a destination for a single errand.

📍 Where

The Village at Tacoma Mall
4502 S Steele St, Tacoma, WA

📈 Why It Matters

When malls die, they take their surrounding retail and food ecosystems with them. When they reinvent, the opposite happens. Tacoma Mall pivoting from "indoor mall plus parking lot" toward "outdoor village with restaurants" is exactly the kind of reinvention that holds value in the surrounding neighborhood and gives South End residents a real reason to drive five minutes instead of thirty.

📬 I'm Aaron Thomas, a local realtor sharing stories that connect us to the places we call home. Every Friday, we publish the South Sound Report, keeping you informed about what's happening in Tacoma, Olympia, DuPont, Puyallup, Lakewood, and the communities in between.

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