GOURMET TRAVELLER 57It’s big, it’s new and it’s ashy. Hudson Yards
on Manhattan’s West Side is no ordinary
food court, writes DAN F STAPLETON.
O
n paper, it sounds contrived: a
Spanish-themed food court run
by three celebrity chefs in an
American mall. But The Shops
and Restaurants at Hudson
Yards is no ordinary mall, and
Mercado Little Spain is much more than a standard
shopping-centre dining precinct.
“What José Andrés and the Adrià brothers have
done at Mercado Little Spain is really remarkable,”
The New York Times food critic Pete Wells told me
soon after my first visit to Hudson Yards. “There’s
never been anything like it for Spanish food.”
New York has never seen anything quite like
Hudson Yards, either. Work started seven years ago
on the US$25-billion complex atop a railway depot,
sandwiched between Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen
on Manhattan’s West Side. Early features include
the mall, a 101-storey office tower, two towers of
luxury apartments, a sliding-roof arts centre and
a massive climbable sculpture known as the Vessel.
Future plans include skyscrapers by Frank Gehry
and Santiago Calatrava. By the time Hudson Yards
is completed in 2024, it will be the largest private
real-estate development in US history.
The 15 stalls and three restaurants that make
up Mercado Little Spain are located on the ground
floor of the seven-storey Shops and Restaurants at
Hudson Yards, which houses 20 other eateries, many
by well-known chefs. The mall is full of culinary
ventures that shouldn’t quite work – but do.
At Mercado Little Spain, Nobel Peace Prize
nominee Andrés and the pioneering Adrià brothers
have deftly mixed highbrow gastronomy and crowd-
pleasing comfort food, demonstrating a deep
understanding of Spanish cuisine in the process.
Each stall yields a new discovery: piping hot patatas
bravas, glasses of tangy gazpacho and fluffy churros
dusted with sugar. Sophisticated Mediterranean
seafood is served at Mar – El Bulli fans will thrill
at resurrected dishes such as liquid olives and
shaved shrimp covered in shrimp-head juice.
At Leña, exemplary grilled meats and paella
dominate the menu; and at the casual Spanish Diner,
the largest of Mercado’s three restaurants, the focus
is squarely on eggs: served with ham, or beside rich
PHOTOGRAPHY LIZ CLAYMAN LA BARRA
, DEBORAH JONES TAK ROOM
& GETTY IMAGES THE VESSEL
. eggplant stew, or atop hot chips (a nod to Madrid’s The whole nine yards