Sitting at a hard-won table inside Galleria Department Store’s newly opened Gourmet 494, where foodie-frequented eateries and bakeries have set up shop, it quickly becomes clear that the court as we know it has changed.

The food court was a place where customers could choose from a wide variety of cuisines and enjoy their meal-of-choice with friends and family. Convenience, diversity and wallet-friendly pricing were the major draws of the experience. Rarely was the court considered a venue where gourmands would gather to enjoy a leisurely meal while debating over the finer points of each dish.

Then the recent opening of Galleria Department Store’s revamped food court-grocery hybrid this month pointed to the possibility that the old model is facing extinction. 

“Customers’ expectations have risen,” Song Hwan-gi, senior VP to Hanwha Galleria’s second merchandise division, explained the massive overhaul of the basement floor of the Apgujeong-dong store.

Christened Gourmet 494, the marble-countered, “caviar black,” “honey gold” and “oyster beige”-hued hall is the culmination of extensive traveling and research.

Galleria staff visited New York, Britain, Italy and France to benchmark food halls and groceries, including the much-gabbed-about Eataly. This was to get an idea of the overall picture of how the new food emporium would work. There still remained the task of deciding what restaurants to bring in.

Bringing in the young

A list of 170 candidate eateries-bakeries for the new space was drawn up. Song and team spent two months culling from that list to a final collection of 23.

Primarily small to mid-sized, independent-minded establishments that have already received a nod of approval by gourmands in the city, the 23 spots hail from all over Seoul.

The goal, according to Song, was to get these tasty eateries into one space so that customers can enjoy them without the hassle of having to make all those trips.

The resulting lineup is pretty promising.

Patrons can chomp down on succulent burgers and decadent shakes from Brooklyn the Burger Joint, enjoy artisanal tortillas from Vatos Urban Tacos and savor salted caramel eclairs from Hotel Douce.

To eat at Gourmet 494 is to join in on an all-star fiesta. The restaurants are the celebrities at this premium food court. These are brand names that grub lovers will recognize, the way that luxury brand gurus can pick out a Louis Vuitton or a Chanel bag from the crowd.

What used to be a more sparse set-up of around six eateries has blown up into a foodie bonanza, and the change has brought in a new crowd.

“There used to be a divide between shoppers hitting the fashion and cosmetics floors and those who frequented the grocery and food court below, but now the two have melded together, and the new Apgujeong Rodeo Subway Station connected to Gourmet 494 is bringing in young customers from afar,” said Song.

From the get-go, Galleria’s food court was not your average eat-out emporium. After putting in an order, customers did not have to wait for their number to get called and go pick up their orders. Food was delivered to them on trolleys.

Gourmet 494 is sticking to the same system, allowing customers to relax and chat until their food arrives, and despite the fierce competition over seating, several diners even move straight into dessert and coffee, lingering over that last sweet bite.

While Gourmet 494 may be one of the first department store food courts of its kind, it was not the first to revamp the concept. This food hall makeover seems to be due, in part, to the rise of the shopping mall.

“Here, the big three department stores are powerful, but the appearance of specialty-store retailers of private-label apparel (a.k.a. SPA) brands has changed that,” said Vivian Ahn, IFC Seoul’s retail real estate VP.

IFC Mall Seoul, which opened in Yeouido this August, is one of the first department store-free shopping malls to open in South Korea. The mall complex totals three basement floors and sports major fast fashion brands H&M, Zara and Uniqlo. The bottom floor is primarily devoted to food and also houses a movie theater.

Tasty and hip eats

The sheer breadth and scope of a place like the IFC Mall virtually eliminates the possibility of a standard food court set-up. Not to mention, the crowd ― family-centric on the weekends, office worker-centric on the weekdays ― demands an eclectic array of dining options, including more upscale spots for client meals and more casual ones for those in need of a quick bite.

A wide variety of dining options were not the only demand IFC faced. According to Ahn, “People enjoy tasty and hip eats now. This is an era when people will go to great lengths to track down good food.”

With that in mind, the goal was to bring in tasty, trendy, diverse food that can still be eaten quickly.

For IFC, that meant bringing in big companies with extensive food and beverage industry know-how like Our Home (which Ahn calls an expert in the food court business) and CJ.

What you get, then, is an expansive food hall-restaurant hybrid with back-to-back, large-scale restaurants for sit-in eating. Diners can enjoy Tex-Mex at On The Border, beef at The Steak House and thick slabs of sweet French toast at Le Brunchic. There is no pick-and-choose. Co-workers and friends need to commit to one spot. For those, however, who want that option, a more traditional food court space is situated in the center.

In other words, the mall food court as we know it has essentially morphed into a restaurant arcade, and by no means does the pricing for many of the establishments fall in the “cheap” category. Ahn stressed that the bar has been set high by consumers who now “eschew the post-meal vending machine cup of joe for Starbucks.”

“People will shell out more money for good quality,” Ahn explained.

In the case of IFC, then, mall dining is not about low-priced, communal dining so much as it is about a more upscale, sit-down experience ― and judging from the long weekday lunch lines, it is on target.

Amusement park of eateries

IFC is not the first shopping complex to revamp the food court model. D-Cube City, which opened last year in Sindorim-dong, is one of the forerunners on the mall dining park concept.

“Food courts cannot just be cheap and diverse anymore,” said Louis Park, D-Cube Department Store’s food and beverage restaurant MD team manager. “They are becoming more professional and upscale. Consumers want that.”

At D-Cube City, a ginormous 41-floor complex, the food court-and-mall dining concept was magnified into a three-story affair. Visitors can do serious sit-in dining at Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Italian restaurants on the fifth and sixth floors or hit one of many stalls on the basement floor.

Patrons can nibble on Ben’s Cookies, slurp a bubble tea from Gong Cha or enjoy okonomoyaki at Botejyu. In fact, the offerings are so extensive that it requires serious decision-making skills to decide what to eat.

To top it off, the Korean food section on the basement floor was built into one seamlessly connected space reminiscent of a traditional Korean village street.

“We formed a hansik expedition team and over the course of a year benchmarked 200 Korean restaurants,” said Park.

What you get is a huge, theme park-type dining experience that serves all kinds of hansik. It feels like a cross between a street market and a food court, with an open-air tea shop over to one side and a formal hanok area over to another side.

D-Cube City’s mall dining set-up does not feel like a standard food court. It feels more like an extensive amusement park of eateries that the diner can navigate. Browsing is encouraged. Nibbling and tasting and weaving back and forth through the stalls, through the village-like Korean Food Street, and even from floor to floor is all part of the fun.

Why all the fuss over the food?

“We quickly understood the importance of food and beverages,” Park explained on why D-Cube put such an effort into dining. “The mall concept is about eating and shopping, not just fashion.”

Gourmet 494; 494 Apgujeong-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul; www.gourmet494.com

IFC Seoul; 23, 23-1 Yeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul; www.ifcseoul.com

D-Cube City; 360-51 Sindorim-dong, Guro-gu, Seoul; www.dcubecity.com

By Jean Oh (oh_jean@heraldcorp.com)