BIGMallrat's Editorial Review
 Stanford
Shopping Center is one of the Bay Area's premier malls. Don't miss it!
It's worth exploring everything here, including
across the street for an excellent Crate & Barrel and Nordstrom.
Everything you can want and more.
Atmosphere
The owners are proud to display award-winning
gardens, and rightfully so. According to their Website, they have
35 varieties of trees, 1,300 individual specimens, and gorgeous
flower-filled planters.
Art
While you are here, enjoy the works of
well-known California artists, such as David Gilhooly’s “Merfrog
Fountain,” Albert
Guibara’s bronze “fat men” sculptures, Larry
Binkley’s “Flying People,” and trompe l'oeil artist
John Pugh’s
mural of an eighteenth century Parisian street
scene (this is the same artist that also worked on the I-680 Amador
Valley and Dublin Boulevard underpasses in Dublin CA).
Stores
Here you'll find the finest collection of department
stores outside Union
Square, including the Bay Area's first Bloomingdale's. This is
one mall you should take the time to walk around each building
so you can browse each shop. Some stores face the mall, others the
parking lot. Most are high-end and fun to browse.
Of course, you'll find a Coach, Kenneth Cole,
Louis Vuitton, Polo by Ralph Lauren, Wilkes-Bashford, and Aldo shoes,
among other exclusive retailers. Don't miss the Oakville Grocery
for a variety of fresh vegetables.
The Bay Area's only Williams-Sonoma Home store
opened April 2006. It features high-end home products on par with
Neiman Marcus.
Food
You'll find
some excellent choices, such as California Pizza Kitchen ASAP,
Max's Opera Cafe, McDonald's, P.F. Chang's China Bistro,
Palo Alto Creamery Fountain & Grill, and Playa Grill.
Parking
True shoppers know this mall and can tell you
the best place to park and where to eat. It's a secret best kept
by preferred shoppers. For me? I prefer the garage by Macy's.
Location
If you haven't been to Stanford Shopping Center
in a few years, you'll definitely notice the improvements to parking
and access. Instead of that single entrance where you had to be in
the right lane to go left (heading northbound on El Camino Real),
or that "secret" entrance from Stanford University, you
now have access from multiple entrance all around the mall. Getting
in and out is a breeze and you don't have to cut between the mall
and Nordstrom where you wait FOREVER at that light! Oh, and now you
have to be in the LEFT lane to enter from northbound El Camino.
For the true opulenteur
Even McDonald's has a piano in the grand Nordstrom
style.
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