Question of the Day - 22 November 2023

A food hall in the U.S. is an upscale food court that’s not associated with a shopping mall. Until relatively recently, since October 2018 when Block 16 opened at the Cosmopolitan, casinos, like malls, were all about food courts, not food halls. 

Rather than the tired old McDonald's, Sbarro, KFC, Panda Express, and Hot Dog on a Stick food court, food halls are touted as community gathering places, often offering spaces to independent food purveyors and small startup businesses to try out their ideas. Food halls also tend to attract upper-crust urban Millennials who eschew the fast-food brands.

In Europe, food halls are often large sections of department stores, while in South America, they’re integrated into public markets, often on the second floor of the big produce and dry-goods mercados.

In the U.S., food halls are hitting it big, with as many as 200 new food halls having opened in the past six to eight years or predicted to open in the next few.

Las Vegas has seven and an eighth will arrive with Durango in a couple of weeks. 

Here, the long-running Forum Food Court at Caesars Palace changed its name to Food Hall when it rebranded with upscale outlets: Bobby's (Flay) Burgers, Chicken Guy (Fieri), DiFara Pizza ($10 slices), Halal Guys, and Starbucks. 

Conversely, the Fulton Street Food Hall across the street at Harrah’s was the first to employ the new appellation, though it’s more like an “a la carte buffet” (VitalVegas’s apt description) where all the food comes out of the same kitchen and is sold at serving stations — Pizza Bar, Noodle Bar, Sushi Bar, Pastry Bar, Coffee Station, and another Bobby's Burgers. 

As mentioned, the first food hall to open as such was Block 16 Urban Food Hall at Cosmo, which hosts Hattie B's Hot Chicken, Lardo (sandwiches), District: Donuts. Sliders. Brew., Tekka Bar (handrolls and sake), Bang Bar by Momofuku (flatbread sandwiches and rice bowls), and Ghost Donkey, the hidden bar that established the food-hall speakeasy trend. Block 16 also introduced the stringently limited menus, offering at most a half-dozen items, sometimes only three or four, and the upscale prices for counter service.

Then came Famous Foods Street Eats at Resorts World where, like Block 16, the quality and prices are high and the menu selections are low. Unlike Cosmo's five, however, there are 16 different food outlets, from burgers and barbecue to fried chicken, Mexican, and eight Asian places, plus the central round bar, and all the ordering is done digitally from central screens, credit card only. Like Cosmo, the speakeasy, Kitty Kitty Vice Den, is accessed through a secret door in the hall.

The Fremont opened its sparkling new food hall late last year, replacing the buffet and the old sports book. This is kind of a cross between food hall and food court, with a franchised Steak ’N Shake, Huey Magoo’s chicken-tenders chain, and DUNKIN’ on the court side, plus CRAFTkitchen (an outlet of the popular Henderson cafe and bakery), Roli Roti (rotisserie-chicken, a Bay Area food-truck place), and Tomo Noodles (noodles/dumplings from California) on the hall side. 

Next up was Proper Eats Food Hall, which opened in January on the second floor of Aria, another hall replacing a buffet. Outlets include: Soul Bird for Korean fried chicken, its first location outside London; Wexler’s (Jewish) Deli, its first location outside of southern California; Egghead from Tao Group for all-day breakfasts; Temaki, serving sustainably caught seafood and made-to-order sushi; Shalom Y’all out of Portland for shawarma and pita; Pizzaoki from DJ Steve Aoki; Laughing Buddha for noodles and ramen bowls; Lola’s Burgers for guess what; Easy Donuts for guess again; and Easy Cocktail Lounge, behind a hidden door. As usual, the various menus are quite limited. And like Famous Foods Street Eats at Resorts World, the quality and prices are high.

The Sundry is the new food hall at the unfinished Uncommons, Las Vegas’ latest lifestyle center located just off the 215 Beltway and directly across Durango Road from Station's new Durango. Like Famous Foods Street Eats and Proper Eats, your first time here presents something of a challenge. You're seated by a hostess, who points to two QR codes, one on a placard that connects to the menu, the other glued to the tabletop that puts you into the ordering system. Unlike the other two digital food halls, at Sundry, everything — ordering, paying, table delivery, text updates — is done on your phone. We figured it out, but some Millennial guys at the table next to ours needed help (believe it or not!). Cuisines include seafood, Greek, Filipino, Indian, fried chicken, sliders, hoagies, donuts, and ice cream, but we don't recommend making the trip all the way out there for any of it.  

And sorry, but it's hard to recommend any of the other food halls. After trying them all for review purposes, we found them to be overblown and overpriced, with too-limited menus and somewhat stressful ordering and paying protocols. If you held our feet to the fire, however, we'd probably go for the Fremont's. Possibly because it's the most like a food court!