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5 Great Things to Eat Now at Chelsea Market
What’s a food court to do during a pandemic? Chelsea Market, with its many outdoor dining pods and red-shirted docents who enforce social distancing, may hold the answer.
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Before COVID-19 crept into town like an unwanted tourist, food courts were a major feature of the dining landscape in New York. They were a perfect meeting between smaller, newer food operations and the lower square footage (and cheaper rents) that these spaces often entailed. But the very communality that food halls championed, which often required patrons to crowd in and sit close together, were their downfall when the pandemic approached. Now, many are closed, and others have reopened with fewer vendors, limited hours, and strict rules enforced, challenging their community-minded, gathering-place aspirations.