Food Courts Are Out; Food Halls Are In

Across the country, enclosed malls are going out of business or else struggling. The huge food courts that have a variety of familiar fast food chains are struggling or dying along with them. A new generation of foodies is rejecting the cookie-cutter recipe for eating on the run, but a new style of cluster dining choices is taking its place: the food hall.   

What makes something a food court, and what makes it a food hall? One is the most discredited concept in 20th-century dining, while the other is the hottest new idea of the 21st: an open floor plan; fresh food prepared in front of your eyes; a post-industrial space, or at least one with high ceilings, exposed wiring, and hanging air ducts. Good-looking people hunched on long benches over small plates or perched on stools around dozens of tiny countertops. The accidental flash of a bad Instagram. The places brim with noise—perhaps even a kind of working sound, an occasional butcher’s chop, something left over from a more utilitarian period, or at least the roar of an espresso machine.

Reduce this concept to the basics—a dozen quick-service restaurants sharing a space, a landlord, and maybe a seating area—and you have a food court. A food hall, in contrast, is a drafty and austere moniker for an age of raw interior design. No pleather or plastic here. What separates the former from the latter is “authenticity,” according to Matthew Fainchtein, a senior director for real estate giant Cushman & Wakefield in Los Angeles and a guy who makes food halls, not courts.

While it seems the food hall is a completely hipster concept, it is actually a resurgence of the traditional public market. For example, they are not limited to malls, but are catering to neighborhoods by opening in office buildings and residential buildings in addition to shopping centers. Read about the development of the food hall at Slate. -via Digg

(Image credit: Flickr user Shinya Suzuki)