Warehouse District Food Hall Auction House Market Closes After 4 Years

Auction House Market, the striking food hall that opened on the corner of Magazine and Julia Streets in the Warehouse District four years ago, has closed, management announced via Instagram on Wednesday, March 23. While a few vendors will continue to serve lunch through the end of the month, March 31st spells the end for the ambitious, 9,000-square-foot food hall.

The food hall was the second to debut in New Orleans (a few years after St. Roch Market opened and just prior to the opening of Pythian Market), and originally housed nine independent food purveyors when it opened in 2018. It’s finishing its run with the cafe, bar, and just four active food vendors: Market Deli, Bayou Boujee Seafood, Asianlicious Sushi and Noodle House, and Turkey Leg Bistro. Those four will keep serving lunch through the end of the month; the Market Deli, cafe, and bar have already shut down. Interestingly, only one of the hall’s current food vendors, Bayou Boujee Seafood, has an independent online presence. Eater has reached out to Bayou Boujee and the others via Instagram and will update if we hear back.

Auction House was designed and opened by Will Donaldson and Barre Tanguis of Politan (previously known as Politan Row), the group that also opened Marigny food hall St. Roch Market and food halls in Atlanta, Miami, and Houston. Politan continued to operate the food hall until 2020, until the building’s owner, Felicity Property Co., laid off the company as the market’s operator due to COVID-related cutbacks, according to Donaldson, and took over. Eater has reached out to Felicity for more information about the closure and will update this story if we hear back; the company’s president, Patrick Schindler, told Gambit that Felicity “saw a shift in the multi-vendor food hall model” and that the company plans to introduce a new concept and operator to the space.

The food hall trend across U.S. cities began in the early 2010s, and quickly grew into a phenomenon — in 2016 alone, the number of food halls in the U.S. grew by 37 percent — a figure that continued to skyrocket. In New Orleans, food halls haven’t necessarily been embraced with the same fervor; St. Roch Market opened in 2015 with a robust 13 vendors, but has since seemed to struggle to keep stalls filled. Two new vendors recently joined St. Roch, however — Hype Eatz, a Southern kitchen from New Orleans native Brandon Robinson, and Tropical Cabana, a Spanish Caribbean sandwich shop. There are currently seven food vendors open at St. Roch; Pythian Market began with 14 vendors when it opened in 2018, and currently houses nine food stalls.

Do you have a restaurant or pop-up tip? Noticed a spot in your neighborhood opening or closing? Let us know.

• Auction House Market is closing [Gambit]