On a Sunday morning along Broadway in downtown Millbrae, the queues form before the dim sum carts do. Cantonese, Mandarin and Taishanese drift between storefronts, families arrive three generations deep, and a small Peninsula city of fewer than 23,000 people pulls diners from across the Bay Area. The Chinese in Millbrae have, over four decades, turned an unassuming railroad suburb into one of Northern California’s most respected destinations for the food, the schools and the quiet prosperity that drew them here.
The Place
Millbrae sits on the San Francisco Peninsula in San Mateo County, wedged between Burlingame to the south and San Bruno to the north, with San Francisco International Airport almost at its doorstep. It is a small, hilly city of roughly 22,700 residents, prosperous and orderly, with a median household income above 160,000 dollars.
The town takes its name from Darius Ogden Mills, a Gold Rush banker who bought the land in 1860 and combined his surname with the Scottish word “brae,” meaning a rolling hillside. The railroad arrived in 1863, and the depot was renamed Millbrae in 1865.
For most of the twentieth century it was a comfortable commuter town. What changed it, and what defines it now, is the community that began arriving in numbers in the 1980s.
How It Became Chinese
The Chinese presence in Millbrae is recent compared with the century-and-a-half-old history of the Chinese in Chinatown, San Francisco. It did not grow from the gold fields or the railroads. It grew from airports, freeways and the particular geography of opportunity on the postwar Peninsula.
The postwar suburb
After the Second World War Millbrae filled with tract housing, its hills covered in modest single-family homes within easy reach of the city and the new international airport. For decades the population was overwhelmingly white and working to middle class, much like neighbouring San Bruno and Daly City.
That ordinariness turned out to be an asset. The houses were well built and reasonably priced, the schools were good, and the location, halfway between San Francisco and the emerging technology corridor to the south, was close to ideal.
The Hong Kong and Taiwan waves
The transformation began in earnest in the 1980s and 1990s. Two streams of migration converged on the Peninsula at once. From Taiwan came engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs drawn by Silicon Valley. From Hong Kong came professional families anxious about the colony’s 1997 handover to China, looking for a stable place to put down roots.
Many of those Hong Kong and Taiwanese families settled in suburban Peninsula communities, and Millbrae became one of the favourites. It offered what they wanted: safety, schools, proximity to the airport for the constant trans-Pacific commute, and a foothold in the most expensive housing market in the country. The pattern was part of a wider reshaping of California suburbs by Asian immigrant families, a phenomenon documented in studies of the era’s suburban migration.
The airport advantage
San Francisco International Airport mattered more here than almost anywhere else. For families who kept business, parents or aging relatives across the Pacific, living minutes from an international terminal was not a convenience but a necessity. A father working in Taipei or Hong Kong could fly out on Sunday night and be home the following weekend.
This pattern, sometimes called the “astronaut family,” shaped Millbrae in subtle ways. It filled the schools with bright, ambitious children while a parent commuted across an ocean, and it tied the town’s prosperity directly to the runways visible from its eastern edge.
The institutions arrive
By the 1990s the community had reached the size where its own institutions followed. The World Journal, one of the largest Chinese-language daily newspapers in North America, established a major office in Millbrae at 231 Adrian Road, anchoring the town as a hub of Chinese-American media and commerce on the Peninsula.
Restaurants, grocers, herbalists, tutoring centres and real-estate offices clustered along Broadway and El Camino Real. The downtown that had once served a quiet commuter suburb reoriented itself, almost block by block, toward a clientele that arrived speaking Cantonese and Mandarin.
The transit hub
In June 2003 the Millbrae intermodal station opened, the only place in the Bay Area where BART and Caltrain meet under one roof, and for years billed as the largest intermodal terminal west of the Mississippi. It connected Millbrae directly to San Francisco, to the airport and down the Peninsula, and it cemented the town’s role as a crossroads.
The station made an already convenient place more convenient still, and it accelerated the development of housing and commerce around it, much of it serving the community that had made Millbrae its home.
The Landmarks
Hong Kong Flower Lounge, 51 Millbrae Avenue. Opened in 1989 by Alice Wong, this was for decades the grand dame of Peninsula dim sum, one of the oldest such restaurants outside San Francisco’s Chinatown. For a generation of local families it was the default address for wedding banquets and Sunday gatherings, a vast room where the carts never stopped circling.
The Kitchen, 279 El Camino Real. A banquet-hall-style Cantonese restaurant and dim sum house that has become one of the most beloved in Millbrae. The room fills with multigenerational tables on weekend mornings, and its reputation pulls diners from well beyond San Mateo County.
Wonderful, 270 Broadway. A celebrated downtown restaurant known for hand-rolled noodles, house-smoked pork belly and thick, fluffy green onion pancakes. It represents the newer wave of Millbrae Chinese dining, regional and craft-minded rather than strictly Cantonese banquet fare.
The World Journal office, 231 Adrian Road. The Millbrae base of one of North America’s largest Chinese-language newspapers, founded in 1976 and distributed nationally with editions out of San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Its presence signalled that Millbrae had become a centre of Chinese-American life, not merely a place where Chinese families happened to live.
Mills High School, 400 Murchison Drive. The local public high school, named after the town’s founding banker, where the student body is roughly 59 per cent Asian. It ranks among the top 10 per cent of California high schools, and its academic reputation is one of the central reasons families choose Millbrae over neighbouring towns.
Millbrae station, 200 North Rollins Road. The BART and Caltrain hub that opened in 2003, the only direct transfer between the two systems in the region. For a community built around airport proximity and trans-Pacific movement, the station made Millbrae one of the best-connected addresses on the Peninsula.
The Millbrae Art and Wine Festival, Broadway. Held each Labor Day weekend along seven blocks of downtown Broadway, this is billed as the Bay Area’s largest such celebration, drawing tens of thousands. It is where the whole town, longtime residents and newer Chinese families alike, shares the same stretch of street for a weekend.
Where They Came From
Millbrae’s Chinese community does not trace to a single village or province. It is layered. The earliest and largest streams came from Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 1980s and 1990s, families with capital, education and trans-Pacific business ties who chose the Peninsula deliberately.
From Hong Kong came Cantonese-speaking professionals, many leaving before the 1997 handover, which explains why Cantonese banquet cuisine and dim sum defined the town’s dining for so long. From Taiwan came Mandarin-speaking engineers and entrepreneurs bound for Silicon Valley.
More recently, mainland Chinese arrivals, including students, tech workers and investors, have added Mandarin and a wider range of regional cooking to the mix, echoing the broader Bay Area pattern seen among the Chinese in Cupertino and the Chinese in Fremont further south and east.
Millbrae Today
Today Asian residents make up close to half of Millbrae’s population, the largest single group, and nearly half the town speaks a language other than English at home. The Chinese community is no longer an arriving wave but the settled centre of gravity, woven into the schools, the downtown and the civic life of the city.
The dining scene remains the most visible expression of that presence. Broadway and El Camino Real hold a density of serious Chinese restaurants that rivals far larger Chinese enclaves, and weekend dim sum in Millbrae draws people from across the Peninsula, much as it does in the Chinese in Monterey Park down in Southern California.
It is not without tension. Housing costs are punishing even by Bay Area standards, longtime restaurants face closure rumours and rising rents, and the Asian share of the population has slipped slightly since 2020 as younger families are priced toward the further suburbs. But Millbrae’s identity is set. It is a small, prosperous, deeply Chinese Peninsula town, defined by the families who saw, in an ordinary railroad suburb beside an airport, exactly the future they wanted to build.
Frequently Asked Questions
How large is the Chinese community in Millbrae?
Asian residents make up roughly 48 per cent of Millbrae’s population of about 22,700, the largest single group in the city, with Chinese residents forming the core of that share. Nearly half of all residents speak a language other than English at home, and about 36 per cent speak an Asian language.
Why did Chinese families settle in Millbrae?
The Chinese in Millbrae arrived chiefly in the 1980s and 1990s, drawn by strong schools, safe neighbourhoods, proximity to San Francisco International Airport for trans-Pacific travel, and access to Silicon Valley jobs. Hong Kong families leaving before the 1997 handover and Taiwanese professionals were the two largest early streams.
Is Millbrae known for Chinese food?
Yes. Millbrae is regarded as one of the best Chinese dining destinations in the Bay Area, especially for Cantonese cuisine and dim sum. Broadway and El Camino Real hold a remarkable concentration of restaurants, and weekend dim sum draws diners from across the Peninsula and beyond.
What is the most famous Chinese restaurant in Millbrae?
The Hong Kong Flower Lounge, opened in 1989 on Millbrae Avenue, was for decades the most renowned, one of the oldest dim sum houses outside San Francisco’s Chinatown and a fixture for wedding banquets. Newer favourites such as The Kitchen and Wonderful have since joined the town’s dining reputation.
How good are Millbrae’s schools?
Very good, which is a major reason Chinese families choose the town. Mills High School, where roughly 59 per cent of students are Asian, ranks among the top 10 per cent of California high schools, with math and reading proficiency far above state averages.
How is Millbrae connected to the rest of the Bay Area?
Millbrae station, opened in 2003, is the only place in the Bay Area where BART and Caltrain connect directly, and it sits minutes from San Francisco International Airport. That connectivity, vital for a community with strong trans-Pacific ties, helped make Millbrae one of the best-linked addresses on the Peninsula.
If your family’s story passed through Millbrae, or any of the places Chinese families have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a flat in Kowloon or a town in Taiwan to a hillside street above Broadway, to wherever you are now.