See Why New Yorkers Are Obsessed With Eataly, Mario Batali's Giant Italian Food Market
The marketplace, located near the Flatiron building in Manhattan and owned by a partnership including Mario Batali, Lidia Bastianich and Joe Bastianich, is a unique combination of sandwich stands, market-style stalls and full-fledged restaurants.
One of the more interesting aspects of Eataly is that many products made on the premises are both for sale to the public and used to supply the restaurants on site. This gives the visitors a rare look at the food being prepared right in front of them, before they taste it in one of the seven eateries in the sprawling market.
Eataly is a place to grab a quick sandwich for lunch or buy some handmade pasta for dinner, a fun combination that can almost make you dizzy with options of how to spend your time and money there. The market's organized chaos is run by over 700 employees.
The original Eataly market opened in Turin, Italy in 2007, its first American store launched in New York in 2010, and the chain has plans to open another location in Chicago later this year.
We stopped by recently to see how the New York marketplace all comes together.