When shoppers at Tysons Galleria ascend to the third floor for a bite to eat, they can choose between handmade pasta, burgers, street tacos, two different types of southeast Asian cuisine and two of Northern Virginia’s hottest chains.
The assortment stands in sharp contrast to what visitors encountered just three years ago, when the food hall lineup had dwindled to mainstay Andy’s Pizza and a couple of other holdovers that soon left.
Left with a “clean slate” after cutting ties with Urbanspace, which operated the food hall from late 2018 to 2023 but was stymied by the pandemic, property owner GGP focused on attracting distinctive takes on reliable cuisines that can appeal to a wide range of customers, according to Nick Marona, the real estate company’s associate vice president of leasing.
“Typically, when we’re looking to kind of re-merchandise a food hall like this, we like to do what I call playing the hits,” he told FFXnow in a recent interview. “You’ve got pizza, you’ve got burger, you’ve got coffee, you’ve got pasta, you’ve got Mexican — all cuisines that can kind of appease everybody within the marketplace.”
The past decade has been a roller coaster for Tysons Galleria’s third-floor food hall, which initially opened in December 2017 as a showcase for concepts from high-profile chef Mike Isabella.
After lawsuits alleging sexual harassment and unpaid rent tanked Isabella’s restaurant empire, the mall brought Urbanspace on board and revived the approximately 41,000-square-foot venue in December 2018 as “Taste of Urbanspace.” However, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the mall in spring 2020, and by the time the food hall officially relaunched in March 2022, only two original tenants — Andy’s Pizza and the Japanese eatery Donburi — remained.
When GGP parted ways with Urbanspace in 2023, the owner of Twelve Twenty Coffee, which subsequently closed, told FFXnow the location proved challenging due in part to the sluggish return of lunchtime office crowds and a “disconnect” in communications and how the food hall was being marketed by Urbanspace.
Buoyed by the addition of the Saudi coffee shop Shotted, GGP — a subsidiary of Brookfield Properties that manages its U.S. retail operations — has since steadily repopulated the food hall with up-and-coming concepts, many of them unique to Tysons Galleria. Just in 2024, the mall introduced the Mexican street food eatery Rabbit Taco, the first brick-and-mortar site for halal burger truck Char’d, and Scolapasta.
With the openings of Bird’s Eye Thai last December and Vietnamese/Cajun fusion restaurant Chao Ban in March, the food hall is now fully leased and operating.
“We knew that the market itself could support the users that we were presenting,” Marona said, crediting the turnaround to “grassroots marketing and merchandising efforts.”
“[Tysons] has a nice mix of office population and residential and daily needs, and obviously, with our shopping component at the property as well, it turned out fantastic,” he said.
Marona says GGP’s efforts bring in a variety of concepts and cuisines to the food hall has helped broaden its customer base beyond the office workers who used to frequent Tysons Galleria’s restaurants during their lunch break.
While office workers are still a key audience as more companies shift back to in-person work, the mall now sees different groups visiting throughout the day, from families to guests staying at the Ritz-Carlton or other nearby hotels, he says. Chao Ban from D.C. chef Kevin Tien, for example, offers both full, sit-down dining service and counter ordering for patrons looking for a quicker meal to take home or to their workplace.
The restaurants also appear to be thriving. Andy’s Pizza and Shotted are both planning to open new locations in the coming months, and at a June 24 event celebrating the completion of the food hall, Char’d chef and co-founder Khallil Daher said GGP has been “easy to work with.”
Tien described Chao Ban as an opportunity for his team to introduce themselves to Northern Virginia and “push themselves creatively.” The restaurant is in the process of obtaining a liquor license from the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority, which would allow it to start serving alcohol at a currently unused bar in the food hall.
“We heard people are clamoring for a happy-hour offering in the mall,” Tien said. The beverage menu is still in the works, but possible items could include unique cocktails with savory components, such as fish sauce.
Tien expressed hope that the restaurant was nearing the end of the ABC licensing process, but an opening date for the bar remains to be determined, according to GGP.
With the food hall now occupied, GGP is turning its attention to addressing other vacancies, including those left by Jiwa Singapura, the Cheesecake Factory and Maggiano’s.
While county permit and land use records suggest the former Saks Fifth Avenue store could be converted into a gym for Onelife Fitness, no details have emerged so far on the plans for the empty restaurant suites.
According to Marona, GGP is in active discussions with prospective tenants for those spaces, which will “likely” turn into a combination of restaurants and other kinds of retail.
“We are extremely optimistic and extremely excited about the groups that we are engaged with,” Marona said. “We’re not in a position to be able to comment on who those folks are, because they’re not fully consummated deals, but when they are, we’re happy to disclose. But again, we’re very excited about the users that we’re engaged with on those spaces.”
