What's New On Castro Valley Boulevard This Summer

Two years ago, the biggest building on Castro Valley Boulevard was a shuttered Rite Aid. This summer, it seats 900 people for dim sum. If you have driven past the storefronts between the freeway and downtown on autopilot lately, the boulevard has quietly reorganized itself around two poles, and the weekend routine most residents built five years ago is due for an update.

The thesis, in one paragraph

Castro Valley's commercial spine now has a clear east and west. The east end, near 3836–3868 CV Blvd, has become a large-scale Cantonese destination anchored by two businesses that opened within weeks of each other in fall 2025. The west end, at 3295 CV Blvd, is a walkable food hall that has spent five years filling in around a basement wine bar and a monthly street event. Both are worth the drive. Neither is the same place it was in 2023. Everything below is evidence for that.

The east pole: a former drugstore, now a banquet hall and a grocery

The Rite Aid at that address closed in August 2023, and for two years residents speculated about what would replace it. In August 2024, Alameda County Public Works approved a restaurant-and-grocery project submitted by Castro Valley resident Ming Y Li with an endorsement from the Castro Valley Municipal Advisory Council. Fourteen months later, both tenants were open.

HL Peninsula debuted at 3868 Castro Valley Blvd on October 16, 2025. The 28,000-square-foot dining room claims the title of largest Cantonese restaurant in the United States, and the numbers back the claim: roughly 900 seats in the main hall, nine private VIP rooms, and a combined capacity around 1,250 when the private rooms fill. For context, the Kowloon Restaurant in Saugus, Massachusetts, has long been cited as the country's biggest Chinese restaurant at around 1,200 seats. Castro Valley's new arrival is a hair larger, and it is the flagship of HL Peninsula's five Bay Area locations. The kitchen leans on handmade dim sum daily, live seafood including lobster, Dungeness crab, and abalone, and banquet staples like roast suckling pig and double-boiled herbal soups.

Practical details worth knowing before you go:

Parking is free in front, but the shared lot fills fast on weekend mornings. Locals report the Sunday brunch rush spills into the parking lot around 11 a.m. If you want a dim sum table without a wait, arrive before 10:30 or after 1:30.

Next door at 3836/3849 Castro Valley Blvd, Mei Mei Market held its grand opening on September 30, 2025. It is the same operator that used to run a smaller store near the Marketplace, now expanded into a full-scale Asian grocery with live seafood tanks, a butcher counter, produce, frozen Vietnamese soups, and the wall of viral snacks and drinks you would otherwise drive to Dublin, Pleasanton, or San Jose to find. The store runs 9:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. daily.

The "so what" for residents: the closest full-scale Asian grocery used to be 99 Ranch in Dublin, roughly a 20-minute drive each way. Mei Mei collapses that errand into a walk across a parking lot from a banquet lunch. Two visits that used to be separate trips are now one stop.

The west pole: the Marketplace, five years in

The Castro Valley Marketplace opened at 3295 Castro Valley Blvd in 2020 and has spent the intervening years building out its merchant list. It sits a nine-minute walk from the Castro Valley BART station, has free parking in the west and south lots, and runs 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, with individual merchants keeping their own hours. If you have not been in since the pandemic, the current tenant mix is worth a look:

• Akemi Sushi — made-to-order sushi and Japanese, daily 10:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
• Cordial Cellar + Lounge — the basement wine bar, Tuesday through Saturday 3 to 9 p.m., Sunday noon to 7 p.m., closed Monday
• Cannery Kitchen & Tap — full-service restaurant on the ground floor
• Oculto and Night Owl — additional dining and drinking tenants
• A butcher and seafood counter, an olive oil and vinegar shop, a cream puff bakery, a Puerto Rican kitchen, a pho counter, and Castro Valley Natural Grocery for organic produce

Cordial deserves its own paragraph. The San Jose Mercury News flagged it as one of the East Bay's better budget-friendly tasting rooms, calling out its hammered copper back bar and the framed living moss artwork made by the owner's mom. Flights of three 2.5-ounce pours run $18 to $20, which is roughly half what you would pay for a comparable tasting in Napa. The wine list stays deliberately short at around eight bottles across whites, sparklings, and reds. Wednesday nights are themed tastings. It is the rare walkable stop in the East Bay where you can arrive by BART, taste through a curated flight, and be home before 10.

The Marketplace also runs First Fridays from 5 to 8 p.m. every month, a free community event with local vendors and live music on the paseo. It has become the most reliable low-effort Friday night in downtown CV.

What is still on the calendar this summer

The boulevard's new food geography is not the only thing worth putting on the calendar. A few standing traditions and one-off dates through August:

• Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo at Rowell Ranch — the 2026 dates ran July 10 and 11. Rowell Ranch itself is a Castro Valley institution older than most of the businesses on the boulevard, and the Bill Pickett event is the country's longest-running touring Black rodeo.
• Castro Valley Car Show 2026 on Castro Valley Blvd — held Saturday, June 20, from 11 a.m. It shuts down a stretch of the boulevard for classic, custom, and specialty vehicles, live music, and vendors. Free to spectators.
• Splendor of Sitar with Purbayan Chatterjee at the Castro Valley Center for the Arts, 19501 Redwood Rd — Saturday, August 22, 5 p.m. The Center's summer programming has quietly become one of the East Bay's more interesting mid-size venue calendars.
• Disney's Newsies at the Center for the Arts, running summer evenings at 7:30 p.m.

If you have out-of-town family visiting in August, the Sitar concert plus a Cordial flight beforehand is a two-stop evening that fits inside a single walkable block.

A Saturday that uses both poles

Here is one way to string it together, on foot where possible:

1. 10:15 a.m. — Park at 3868 CV Blvd. Put your name in at HL Peninsula for a mid-morning dim sum table. If the wait is long, the pastries and prepared items at Mei Mei next door will hold you over.
2. 11:30 a.m. — Dim sum. Order the handmade dumplings and one live seafood item. Split the check with more people than you think you need.
3. 1:00 p.m. — Walk across the lot into Mei Mei Market. Live seafood, sauces, snack aisle, done in 30 minutes.
4. 2:30 p.m. — Drive or bike the roughly 1 mile west to Castro Valley Marketplace at 3295 CV Blvd. Browse the merchants, pick up bread or a cream puff.
5. 3:30 p.m. — Head down to Cordial's basement for the afternoon flight. You have made it home well before dinner, with groceries in the trunk and a wine bottle for later.

That itinerary would not have been possible in 2023. The east end was a boarded-up drugstore. The Marketplace was still finding its tenants. What the boulevard offers now is a genuine choice between two different registers of a weekend: a big loud banquet room on one end, a quiet copper-bar tasting on the other, with a mile of everyday errands connecting them.

A quick note for people watching the boulevard

The pattern to watch is repurposing at scale. The Rite Aid building did not become another drugstore. It became a 28,000-square-foot destination that pulls diners from across the East Bay. The old Marketplace lease footprint keeps producing new food tenants. When commercial corridors reorganize this quickly, the residential blocks around them tend to feel it, in both foot traffic and how buyers describe a neighborhood to their friends. That is a longer conversation for another post.

For now, the shorter conversation is the one you can have this Saturday, over dim sum at 11 a.m. or a wine flight at 4.

If you have questions about how the Castro Valley market is moving alongside this commercial buildout, or you want a plain-English read on what your home is worth in the current market, reach out to Bert Aranda. Four decades of East Bay experience, direct answers, and a free home valuation whenever you are ready.