![\"Burgers](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/SUT-L-FOOD-HALL-0710-01.jpg\")
Burgers from Cosmos Burgers, which has a space at the Windmill Food Hall in Carlsbad. (Tiger Hospitality)<\/p>\nPiazza della Famiglia in bustling Little Italy has been without its long-standing food hall for five months now following an unexpected closure. But that\u2019s likely to change later this year when a new operator will reinvigorate the space with several food concepts, an indoor-outdoor bar and regular programming in the surrounding square.<\/p>\n
Construction only recently started on the makeover of the nearly 5,000-square-foot space that occupies the ground floor of a 97-unit apartment building developed by H.G. Fenton in 2018, along with the original food hall. It featured a bar, in addition to a number of food vendors, some of which were associated with San Diego-based Sam Zien, better known as \u201cSam the Cooking Guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the hall closed suddenly in February, then-operator Grain and Grit Collective, which is known for Carnitas Snack Shack on the Embarcadero and a few Broken Yolk Cafe franchises outside of San Diego, said only that the closure was triggered in part by its desire to focus on areas of growth in its other restaurant ventures.<\/p>\n
New operator Berke Bakay, who\u2019s known for bringing the Windmill Food Hall to Carlsbad, says he believes the changes he has in store for the Little Italy location will do much for ensuring is success and appeal to both locals and visitors. He\u2019s hoping to open the new space sometime before the end of the year.<\/p>\n
Key among the planned changes is a reoriented bar, which will be moved from its former location near the back of the food hall closer to the entrance and will be configured to operate both inside and outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnytime you are in a residential or office building, it becomes really difficult to have energy flowing because it\u2019s easy to pass by and it feels like you\u2019re just in a residential or office building,\u201d said Bakay, who is a managing partner with Tiger Hospitality, which is in the process of developing a second food hall, in San Clemente, that will open in the fall. \u201cBut we are moving the bar, which is nested inside and almost hidden to the front of the property. So it\u2019ll be impossible to walk by and not understand the energy inside, whereas before it felt like the place was too dark or closed.<\/p>\n
This will now be the first thing you see, so this should make a major difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burgers from Cosmos Burgers, which has a space at the Windmill Food Hall in Carlsbad. (Tiger Hospitality)<\/p>\n
The food offerings are still a work in progress, but three of the concepts \u2014 Cosmos Burger, Lobster Lab and La Vida (think bowls, wraps and smoothies) \u2014 will be borrowed from Windmill. In addition, Tiger is in negotiations with what it says is a prominent pizza operator and is also exploring adding a fresh pasta concept. Bakay said he would also like to have food carts in the piazza, including one to sell gelato or ice cream.<\/p>\n
Although the cost of the project continues to fluctuate, Bakay believes the new operation will require a multimillion-dollar investment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe makeover of the space will be in the seven digits. We\u2019re not just slapping on paint,\u201d he said. I already operate a successful food hall in Carlsbad that has been there since 2019. We went through COVID and we survived. So I firmly believe what we\u2019re doing in Carlsbad is resonating, and I\u2019m excited that what we will bring to the piazza will be an upgrade to what was being offered before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marco Li Mandri, who was the founding chief executive administrator of the Little Italy Association, says there wasn\u2019t necessarily anything inherently wrong with the previous food hall. He just thinks the previous operator started losing interest and wanted to move on to other ventures. Still key to the success of any food hall, Li Mandri says, is the surrounding piazza, located on West Date Street between Columbia and India streets.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has all the assets going for it, and it\u2019s in the heart of Little Italy,\u201d Li Mandri said. \u201cIt had a really strong opening pre-COVID. And after COVID, the owners of the old food hall had other interests in mind so it wasn\u2019t managed as aggressively as it had been.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile there has been a lot of outdoor dining going on in Little Italy, I don\u2019t think that would impact sales at the food hall, and this was the only place where you can drink alcohol in a large outdoor environment. The funding just wasn\u2019t there to keep the piazza active and keep the programming on a regular basis to draw people into the piazza.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bakay says part of the makeover will be enlivening the piazza itself with cooking demos, outdoor yoga and live music.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur vision is to be part of the community there,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the Windmill, we have live music, bingo night, bring-your-dog night, trivia night, so it fees like a community. We\u2019ll do our own version in Little Italy that\u2019s fitting for the neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Piazza della Famiglia in bustling Little Italy has been without its long-standing food hall for five months now…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":54543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,64,1582,276,2105,1370,988,3549,7264,1072,7289,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-54542","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-food-and-drink","13":"tag-latest-headlines","14":"tag-restaurants","15":"tag-san-diego","16":"tag-sandiego","17":"tag-things-to-do","18":"tag-top-stories-sdut","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114829869932244716","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}