I've never been to the New York Eataly but I just came back from Italy and visited one in Florence. It's a good one-stop-shop kinda place with a surprisingly good wine cellar too. Though in my opinion it was much better to visit the local markets for a larger variety and fresher produce.

>>7280736
>hype

Fuck are you from, Kenosha?

>>7280736
I got a pastry there. It was 8/10, but with price as if it was 10/10!

I go there all the time. The hype is the only part about it I don't like because the crowds can be annoying. Aside from the coffee everything is pretty high quality, and the prices aren't as bad as you might expect (except in the wine section where they put restaurant markup on retail bottles).
>>7281140
Apparently it's in tour guides or something because it's packed with slow-walking tourists blocking the aisles at all times.

>>7280736
It's an upscale place in the Flatiron district, and it is priced accordingly. The quality of everything there is very high, but you're paying a luxury mark up for the convenience of it all being under one roof in a posh neighborhood.

For a price insensitive customer or a tourist it would be worth a visit. If you consider yourself a savvy diner/shopper you can find most of what Eatly has to offer for lower prices elsewhere.

It's kind of like a giant Dean and Deluca with a few restaurants, a fish counter and wine. But the target audience is not fans if Italian food, it's very particularly wealthy people who are fans of Italian food. We're talking the crowd that would be slumming it shopping at Whole Foods. That's most of who's there. A little too fucking posh for my tastes.

The produce is really good. Fish/Meat is high quality but expensive. I've only eaten at la verdure but it was decent if a little expensive for what it was.

If you want a dope food market experience, walk 3 blocks east to kalustyans instead.

>>7281864
>It's kind of like a giant Dean and Deluca
Forgive my ignorance because I never saw D&D in its heyday (which I assume was in the mid 80s when I wasn't living here), but when I think of that place I think of stale breads and out-of-fashion pastries that were made yesterday, a lot of stuff that seemed really cool and exotic 25 years ago (truffle salt, chutney in a jar, imported sun dried tomatoes, shrink-wrap duck confit, etc) and basically nothing of value to someone who actually cooks. It's like the whole store came out of mail order gift catalogs and got set on white countertops for the customer to fondle.

Whereas you can get a decent amount of produce at Eataly, the meat and fish counters are actually pretty high tier compared to a lot of places in the city (and reasonably priced if you compare apples to apples and not dry aged prime piemontese to USDA cutter-grade meat from C-Town), and they bake bread and make fresh pasta right there in front of you.

>>7281886
>It's like the whole store came out of mail order gift catalogs and got set on white countertops for the customer to fondle.
It's fallen since its heyday, and the place has become a little like that. They do still have a modest selection of local, seasonal, hard to find produce in the front. Of course it's twice the price of what it would be at the Union Square greenmarket.

My point was about the wealth of the crowd. The shoppers at D&D may skew older than those at Eatly, but they're about the same level of wealth. More price sensitive customers are lining up at places like Di Palo, which still ain't cheap.

>>7281920
>Di Palo
Red Sauce and Gabagol: The Store. Hardly an alternative to Eataly. Eataly is more like a slightly less comprehensive, Italian-themed version of Chelsea Market. A more fleshed out grocery store with a lot of built-in restaurants. I'll go there for meat or fish when I missed the USQ market and I don't feel like dealing with the zoo that is Chelsea Market.

I've been to the Eataly in Chicago a few times, but not to the one in NYC or elsewhere.

Here, it is more of a place to eat at and browse around. The produce selection is a pretty insignificant part of the store. The fish and meat selections counters though are the best in the entire city. Most of the space is taken up by the restaurants. All of which I've eaten at have been very good.

It's a great place to go people watch as it's frequented by tourists and locals alike.