Arcade Food Hall Review: 8,348 Verdicts on the Modern Food Court

A 4.5 food hall with a huge sample, reviving an old word – the arcade – for the age of the Instagram food court

Arcade at Tottenham Court Road holds a 4.5 from eight thousand three hundred and forty-eight people – one of the largest samples in this survey – and revives an old and elegant word, the arcade, for one of the most modern of formats: the upmarket food hall.

The word “arcade”

An arcade, properly, is a covered walkway lined with shops, often glass-roofed and grand – the beautiful nineteenth-century shopping arcades of London, Paris, and Milan, where the well-to-do could shop and stroll sheltered from the weather. The word carries connotations of elegance, of the Victorian and Edwardian city at its most refined, of Burlington Arcade and its uniformed beadles.

It later drifted to mean the amusement arcade – the seafront hall of slot machines and, later, video games, which we met at NQ64. So “Arcade” carries two ghosts: the grand covered shopping street, and the noisy hall of games. This venue reaches for the first – the elegant covered gathering space – while quietly borrowing a little of the second’s fun and energy.

The rise of the food hall

Arcade is a food hall – the format that has swept global cities over the last decade, in which a single large space houses many independent food vendors around shared seating, so that a group can eat Korean, Italian, Mexican, and Japanese at one table. It is the upmarket, curated descendant of the humble food court, elevated from the shopping-centre basement to a destination in its own right.

The format solves a genuine modern problem: the group where everybody wants something different. Instead of arguing over a single restaurant, the group goes to the food hall and scatters to different counters, reconvening at a shared table with wildly different meals. It is the culinary equivalent of the streaming service – infinite choice, no commitment – and it suits the modern appetite perfectly.

The Prat’s food desk notes that the food hall is also a clever piece of economics: it lets small, independent, often first-time food businesses reach a large audience without the crippling cost and risk of their own premises, incubating new traders under one roof. The best of them are genuine engines of culinary discovery, and the worst are simply upmarket food courts with better lighting.

The volume score

Eight thousand reviews is an enormous sample, and a 4.5 across it is a genuinely strong, volume-proof score – far better than the usual gravitational pull toward mediocrity that we have seen crush places like the Royal National. The food hall format, with its huge choice, seems to satisfy the crowds in a way that a single fixed menu cannot, because everyone finds something they wanted rather than settling for one kitchen’s compromise.

The bar

Alongside the food vendors, Arcade runs bars, and the whole operation hums with the energy of a covered market crossed with a night out. The reviews describe good variety, a buzzy atmosphere, and the particular pleasure of a table covered in four different cuisines at once.

Verdict

A large, buzzy, high-scoring food hall reviving the elegant old word “arcade” for the thoroughly modern format of the curated food court, solving the eternal problem of the group that cannot agree on dinner.

Go with friends who want different things, scatter to the counters, and reconvene at a shared table – the modern arcade, feeding eight thousand happy reviewers one mismatched feast at a time.

Alan Nafzger

Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]