Has the Tin Building Cooked Up a New Recipe for Leisure?

By Jesse Dorris

Are we still hungry for food halls? Most everywhere has them: stuffed into old airport hangars, abandoned warehouses, and underused office buildings; offered as foodie destinations or TikTok mukbang backdrops—the food hall is a hallmark of 2010s urban development, and even the COVID pandemic couldn't stop them.

One might be forgiven for finding the idea of yet another in New York City, well, stale. Leave it to Jean-Georges Vongerichten to find a fresh way to serve it up.

"We intensely studied markets from all over the world," says Robin Standefer of AD100 firm Roman and Williams, who linked up with Michelin-starred Vongerichten and Cass Calder Smith Architecture + Interiors for the project. "Tokyo's seafood markets, Barcelona's Boqueria, and the hawker stalls of Singapore, to name a few. We were looking to pin down the energy of movement, commerce, and trade that has made these spaces a shared tradition across cultures and geographies. We knew the Tin Building absolutely needed to bottle that same vitality and mix."

The Spoiled Parrot, a sugar-coated reverie inside of The Tin Building, serves up homemade gelato and cotton candy, Swedish gummies, chocolate bars, and other sweet treats.

French cuisine and a generous helping of bistro chic are on offer at T Brasserie.

It does. And, crucially, it does so at a time when hospitality and shopping alike are shifting shapes, especially in New York City. With half a dozen fine dining restaurants; six fast-casual options; four bars; and markets for candy, flowers, and specialty goods spread over 53,000 square feet, the Tin Building represents something altogether new for the metropolis—and maybe for the US too.

This isn't Vongerichten's first brush with innovation. He is, after all, the chef who lent Thai cuisine a French touch with Vong, fused communal-table style with haute cuisine at The Mercer Kitchen, and pushed the limits of plant-based menus with the vegetable-forward ABCV.

But the Tin Building is the chef's boldest project yet. The hybrid enterprise occupies the former home of the bustling and beloved Fulton Fish Market, which was constructed in 1907 by Berlin Construction Co. Boasting decorative sheet metal pilasters and a corrugated metal façade, it was among the first places Vongerichten came to see when he arrived in New York City in 1986. "When I get to a city I don't know," he says, "I go to the markets to check my bearings. And the Fish Market was already an iconic space, with all those cast iron columns."

Double Yolk, a fast-casual breakfast bar inside the Tin Building

The Tin Building

The southern tip of Manhattan was a wild west back then, he says, with a bar or two emptying out just as the sun rose over the Brooklyn Bridge and chefs arrived to select fish of the day. The Fish Market became a neighborhood fixture, and when it burned down in 1995, Wank Adams Slavin Associates did a faithful reconstruction. A decade later, with lower Manhattan making post-9/11 moves towards mixed-use spaces to keep Wall Streeters and other local workers from moving to the suburbs, the Fulton Fish Market finally swam upstream to the Bronx. Over the past 10 years, developer Howard Hughes Corporation has spent $789 million revivifying the Seaport area, enlisting Vongerichten to rethink the beloved Fulton Fish Market building in 2016. Later, architects SHoP signed on, embarking on a painstaking renovation of the former fish market to bring it up to code. They lifted the tin structure, moved it beneath a highway underpass, and repositioned it some six feet up and 32 feet to the east. The mise en place was ready for its chef.

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Fish, fittingly, is a guest's first impression upon approaching the space—great banks of them, iced, their flesh complemented by the veins in the Statuarietto marble counter. Looking up, exposed ductwork forms channels as an art installation by Michael Murphy—of fish, what else?—swims in the air. A vegetable market beckons to the left, while a flower stall blossoms to the right. The circulation path is both rational and easy to wander, angling through dosa stations and bakeries, raw bars, and a Willy Wonka–worthy candy fantasia called The Spoiled Parrot.

"While the central hub is consistently anchored by the masonry, brass, and tile of the 1920s and 1930s and guided by our Roman and Williams original design Oscar and Globe fixtures," says Standefer, "the restaurants and dining areas are equally distinct." The vegan restaurant Seeds and Weeds is ready for the new age with avocado-green banquettes, curving planks of light wood, and ample outgrowths of potted plants. After perusing the dozens of vinegars and teas at the red lacquer-framed Asian market Mercantile East, curious diners may push through a pair of plush emerald curtains to find a gold peacock marking the way to the velvet maximalism of the Chinese-inspired fine dining destination, House of the Red Pearl. Or on a fine day when the ground floor's garage doors are thrown open, sup on traditional French fare en plein air. "We introduce each of these spaces with recurring portals marked by radius-corner arches clad in green tiles that serve to punctuate the building and act as guideposts," Standefer says. "We believe that there is unity within variety, and these varying interventions add texture and discovery to a visitor's immersive experience. It's just like familiarizing yourself with a new city by hopping from destination to destination."

House of the Red Pearl, a jewel box of a restaurant, is tucked away behind a second-floor market.

A bar at House of the Red Pearl

The feeling does echo Vongerichten's beloved way of acquainting himself with a new space. But what separates the Tin Building from other nouveau food halls—Paris's sustainability incubator Hoba, devoted to low-carbon and high-end cuisine; LA's Citizen Public Market, a former publishing house recast as an upscale home to big culinary stars like Nancy Silverton; and even New York's own Mercado, chef José Andrés's branding exercise-cum-Boqueria tribute which remains one of Hudson Yards's only true success stories—is its close connection to time and space. As mushrooms and squash replace the first-floor market's ruby-ripe tomatoes, the restaurant menus change, as may staff, who can stage and serve at different locations. And though downtown barflies don't greet the dawn like they used to, Vongerichten is betting the current denizens might linger long after the working day is done to quaff one of a couple dozen beers on offer at an upstairs bar, slide onto a stool downstairs for an oyster or six, buzz back upstairs to examine a surprisingly vast selection of Manuka honeys, or chile crisps, or olive oils at the markets. "The idea was to create a market where the fish on ice today will be in the restaurant tomorrow," Vongerichten says. "It's really a chef's dream." And you can dream it too. Call it farm-to-food hall or farm to your own table. Call it a fresh take on a new tradition.