The last time I visited Oakridge Mall in South San Jose was in September 2020. California allowed stores to reopen at 25% of capacity after the COVID-19 shutdown. I did a walkthrough video of the empty mall and the barren stores.
This past weekend I went to Oakridge Mall to visit two new restaurants in the food court. I got a slice of cheese pizza from Blondie’s Pizza and the Dreamsicle milkshake at Shack Shake. The mall was busy with so many new stores.
Blondie’s Pizza
When I was in college in the early 1990s, my friends and I would go up to UC Berkeley to hang out. One place we always stopped off at was Blondie’s Pizza on Telegraph Avenue. A slice of pizza and a soda cost five bucks.
Blondie’s Pizza got a new owner who changed the name to Abe’s Pizza in 2016 and changed the name back in 2022. Two new stores opened in San Francisco at Westfield Mall and Stonestown Galleria. A new store opened in San Jose at Oakridge Mall.
I got a slice of cheese pizza for $5.95, takeout box was $0.50, processing fee was $0.35, and sales tax was $0.64. A grand total of $7.44 for a slice of pizza and no soda. The days of slapping down a fiver on the counter for a pizza slice and soda are long gone.
The cheese slice I had didn’t taste the same as I remembered it. Since I stopped drinking sodas six months ago, some foods don’t taste the same anymore. Being 30 years older, I prefer to eat thin crust pizza with less cheese and less bread.
Blondie’s Pizza was okay.
Shake Shack
Shake Shack opened their first Silicon Valley store at the Stanford Shopping Center in 2018. Their second store opened at Valley Fair Mall in 2020. And now their third store at Oakridge Mall.
I ordered the new Dreamsicle milkshake. Vanilla and orange frozen custard with whipped cream and crushed orange candy sprinkles on top. The blood orange flavor was quite noticeable at the beginning. The vanilla flavor became more obvious towards the end.
I had the black sugar vanilla milkshake and the chocolate pudding milkshake back in 2021. The Dreamsicle is my new favorite milkshake.
I made the mistake of getting Blondie’s Pizza first and then getting the milkshake from Shake Shack. That’s why my slice of cheese pizza looked dead on arrival in the box. Next time I would order the milkshake, get the slice of pizza, and then pick up my milkshake.