Food halls

Two very different things go by the same name, and knowing which you are walking into saves disappointment.

The term 'food hall' in New York covers two distinct things.

The first is a public market — a municipal or long-established building housing independent grocers, butchers, fishmongers and small producers, where people actually shop for ingredients. The second is a curated food court — a developer-assembled collection of prepared-food stalls aimed at lunch and tourists. Both are worth visiting. They are not interchangeable.

Essex Market

The closest thing New York has to a genuine public market. It descends from the pushcart markets of the Lower East Side, moved indoors by the city in the late 1930s, and relocated in 2019 into a purpose-built space across the road at Essex Crossing.

It keeps a real mix: long-standing family grocers and butchers alongside newer producers, with an emphasis on the neighbourhood's Latin American and Jewish food traditions. You can do a week's shopping here, which is the test.

Chelsea Market

Occupying the former Nabisco factory complex on Ninth Avenue — the building where the Oreo was developed. The industrial fabric was kept, and the ground floor is a long brick concourse of food businesses.

It is very busy and heavily touristed, and the mix has shifted over the years towards prepared food. Still worth it for the building alone, and several of the original tenants are serious.

DeKalb Market Hall

Underneath City Point in Downtown Brooklyn, and one of the better assembled collections of prepared food in the city — deliberately weighted towards long-standing Brooklyn businesses and outposts of neighbourhood institutions rather than new concepts.

The Tin Building

At the South Street Seaport, in the reconstructed shed that once housed part of the Fulton Fish Market. A large, expensive, tightly curated market-and-restaurant complex under a single operator. Impressive, and a very different animal from Essex Market.

Others worth knowing

Arthur Avenue Retail Market in the Bronx is a genuine old-style public market, built in the 1940s to move pushcart vendors indoors, and still the heart of that neighbourhood's Italian food trade. Moore Street and La Marqueta in Manhattan and Brooklyn are similar municipal markets with long histories.

These are the ones where the market building is doing its original job.

Practical

Hours vary widely by stall within the same hall, and many close earlier than the building does. Weekends at Chelsea Market and the Tin Building are extremely crowded; weekday mornings are the opposite.