Arcade Food Hall, Covent Garden
Arcade opened its third site, following Tottenham Court Road and Battersea Power Station. The look and feel is notably different; responding to the space with a warmer, more dimly-lit environment than its other locations, creating an evening into late-night feel.
What remains consistent is the restaurant mix. It has launched with much the same line-up as its other sites: Hero, Manna, Gracey’s, Solis, and Plaza Khao Gaeng are all residents within at least two, some across all three.
Pride is still taken in menu navigability and speed of service. However, having the menu on a small phone screen doesn’t make the diner’s role easier than a larger, physical menu. It ultimately can speed up service, and remove payment friction at the end, but loses the personal touch of interaction with a team. Also, during the soft launch there was only a limited selection, and still choice paralysis slowed decision making.
Food quality across the board was excellent, a benefit of working with tried and tested brands. That gives Arcade Covent Garden solid foundations, but it will need to evolve to become exciting, given similarity across the three locations and having not (yet) found a space for the next big thing.
The very principle of food halls should be to inspire a generation of hospitality entrepreneurs: trusting in the ‘new and the next’, providing them with a low-cost platform to explore, and exciting diners with a varied line-up they can’t find anywhere else.
Menu curation is also a consistent challenge: asking a small group to only share their greatest hits leads to blending of styles. A lot of heavy, often deep-fried items take centre stage, while simply vegetable dishes aren’t available in number to break that up.
The Arcade approach may well be to homogenise its offer across multiple sites, for the long term. With such a strategy, encouraging return visits will be a challenge. At least for now, good food, a warm environment, and excellent service is a recipe for Arcade Covent Garden’s success.