San Jose Downtown Food Hall officially opened its doors on Jan. 19 at 82 E. Santa Clara St., featuring 23 restaurants that range from finger food to full course meals.
Only a handful of restaurants are open at this time, including restaurants such as Herbivore, Azuma Japanese Sushi, Sunset Squares Pizza and Y-Linh Sandwiches, and offers Mexican, Indian, American, Halal, Japanese, Italian and vegan dishes.
“Imagine your son wants a burger, your daughter wants sushi and your wife wants Italian,” Shabana Serang said, owner of the Mercy Mediterranean restaurant, “this is one of the only spots in the Bay Area that has that option.”
Most food items in the San Jose Downtown Food Hall range from $6 to $20 depending on the restaurant.
Customers can purchase food at the kiosks set up in front of each restaurant. Past the front doors, restaurant workers can be seen helping customers who appear to be confused by how to use the kiosks.
Other designated workers help give food delivery drivers their ordered meals.
The space was bought by Travis Kalanick, Uber Eats former CEO, and is now leading a firm called CloudKitchens, according to the SFGate.
CloudKictchen is a company where seamless delivery is prioritized in order to help people open up their own restaurants, according to its website.
“So this is also a GrubHub, DoorDash and Uber Eats center,” Serang said.
Even though “to-go” is one of the San Jose Downtown Food Halls slogans on its website, there are plenty of seating options for people to enjoy their meals.
Varun Aggarwal and Sachin Naik are the owners of Aroma Indian Cuisine, a restaurant that specializes in vegan options.
Aggarwal and Naik are the first ones to open their doors in the food hall at 9:30 a.m. while Mercy Mediterranean and SpicePulao are the last to close their doors at 10 a.m. according to San Jose Downtown Food Hall’s website.
“Eventually I want to be open from four in the morning to around 11 for students when they have finals,” Serang said, “I like this place as a study hall.”
Serang said San José State students may have another option to add to get their work done especially during finals.
Serang said her niece, Mariam Serang, also works at Mercy Mediterranean when she gets the time and chance to help out her aunt.
“I enjoy Luna’s Halal Taqueria, but there’s a ton of options from pizza, Vietnamese sandwiches, boba and Indian food,” Mariam said.
She said she likes how the kiosks are designed, and believes it speeds up the waiting process, as she handled a barrage of customers during the peak lunch hours.
Nyea Noeun, a volunteer at the San José Food Hall, said the food hall can be the new “fast food” option as opposed to eating at a McDonald’s or a Burger King.
“It's quick and easy and you can sit comfortably here, or you can choose to go,” Noeun said.
Noeun said she lives in San Francisco and is currently attending the City College of San Francisco to study architecture designs.
She said San José is the perfect spot for this unique dining concept.
“San José downtown feels more like a city than back home does,” said Noeun. “There’s still a lot of people and a lot of foot traffic.”
Noeun said the food hall has a different feel from the standard food court.
She said places like this may have been created due to the effects of COVID-19, when companies like Grubhub, Uber Eats and DoorDash were exploding in terms of business.
“Typically your traditional food court is taking up a lot of space, but with here there’s enough seating without having the customers waiting feel squished in line,” Noeun said.
“Imagine people coming from different cultures, backgrounds, religions, and faiths. The beautiful concept is to bring people together,” Serang said.
