I remember going to Westfield Shepherd’s Bush to visit my first food hall, still a relatively new concept for British diners. They’re big rooms filled with shared seating and different kitchen stalls, serving everything from Thai to burgers, wontons to bratwurst. You can have a burrito and your friend can have a pizza. Oh, how I loved it. I was instantly gratified, gloriously free from the convention of menus, courses or ‘cuisines’. I was excited.

These places were born in a boardroom to the sound of marketing ‘insights’

I was also a teenager. And that’s the problem: food halls are childish places. Surely the more choice there is, the better? Nope, it’s not true. Far better to trust the judgment and expertise of a proper restaurant, and worry about the things that really make a good sit-down meal.

Things like conversation, which food halls ruin. Never mind that these huge spaces echo like a factory floor. Never mind the annoyingly large tables, or the coccyx-torturing stools. It’s the buzzers, the little battery powered perspex squares that vibrate and flash once your food is ready. Try maintaining a conversation with four other people constantly jumping up and down to the whims of a writhing, vibrating slab of plastic. What, you want your food to arrive at the same time? Sorry, your friend’s beef rendang will be ready in three minutes and you will have to wait 20 for your chicken burger.

Gone are all the lovely little things that make restaurants worth it: a nice room, a properly thought-out menu, the gentle hum of people enjoying themselves, a basket of bread, the smiling recommendation of a waitress, starters followed by mains, a bottle of wine, flirting with the pudding menu, another bottle of wine, flirting with the waitress.

Maybe food halls aren’t supposed to take the place of restaurants.

QOSHE - Tray and dismay / Abolish the food hall - Angus Colwell
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Tray and dismay / Abolish the food hall

6 1
21.02.2024

I remember going to Westfield Shepherd’s Bush to visit my first food hall, still a relatively new concept for British diners. They’re big rooms filled with shared seating and different kitchen stalls, serving everything from Thai to burgers, wontons to bratwurst. You can have a burrito and your friend can have a pizza. Oh, how I loved it. I was instantly gratified, gloriously free from the convention of menus, courses or ‘cuisines’. I was........

© The Spectator


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