I read an article yesterday evening about the “San Jose Food Hall”, which appears to be a ghost kitchen / in person mashup. They’ve got some large number of ghost kitchens, but also a small seating area, kiosk or mobile orders, and a robot that brings you the food (no tipping, I hope).
According to the writeup, one indian restauranteur backs many of the hall entries, but reading the list, I’m rather excited. There’s a few new indian pizza hybrids (including some form of Detroit / Indian entry?), and a slot called “Silk Road” that appears to have a nice list of eastern european from Polish through Georgian through Nepal (although one always worries about focus with a menu like that).
Since I wouldn’t be able to eyeball the stalls or quiz the robot about which entry specializes in what, I wonder if anyone’s visited and has any advice?
Will amened with a writeup - enthusiastic to visit next few days
[ and it seems yall like pictures. I’ll see what I can do. ]
I had a few times dishes from ghost kitchens and they were clearly inferior to the “original” dishes. The quality of execution lacks compared to a “real” kitchen crew who knows the dishes.
It is unclear to be exactly what is going on at the food hall. Perhaps I used ghost kitchen incorrectly. It looks like this is populated by an actual chef, not a replica, but they share front of house. Anyway still looking for the right day to get down there.
From the article and elsewhere it sounds that they have one “central” kitchen which cooks for all different “restaurants” - so I think ghost kitchen is a correct way to describe it (and at least for me it is unlikely that one kitchen crew can cover many different restaurant menus without massive quality issues - I had one colleague who lives down in SJ and went sometime ago and wasn’t thrilled by the food at all)
