The triumphant return of the downstairs food court

HiddenDragon said :

It was so much cooler when you could smoke there, in black and white:

http://www.abc.net.au/corp/history/80years/videos/80years-act-MonaroMall.mp4

yes but the food court in those days was about where Lincraft is now – you used to be able to drive through Ainslie Ave when Monaro Mall was operating.

glad the food court is opened again, gives a little more variety. and yes JonahBolgna – we are all easily amused! 🙂

There’s nothing particularly American about malls – they’ve existed for thousands of years. And whilst the modern suburban malls may well have partially evolved in the USA, they also evolved in Australia at the same time.

It’s no coincidence that the largest mall company in the world is Australian. We have to take at least as much blame for malls as Americans. Australia had exactly the same conditions that fostered their development – Rapid car-focussed expansion of outer suburbs in the 20th century, with plenty of space in which to expand.

Australia and the USA have way more in terms of common history and parallel evolution than most Australians would care to admit.

La_Tour_Maubourg said :

c_c™ said :

La_Tour_Maubourg said :

Where has the Greek food place gone?
I’d’ve also thought a new fountain would look great installed where the old one once was..

I don’t recall either a fountain or a greek food outlet.

Fountain: at the base of the once standing clock which ran up to the third level.. In front of where McDonald’s used to be. (Replaced by rotating TV)

Greek food outlet: Back left corner next to (the late) Dai Ho.

Gosh, we’re going back a long way there. The clock tower and base was taken away a long time ago, they also removed the kiosks on the upper two levels for which the clock tower formed the rear walls. I think that was when POSH downstairs was replaced, but can’t recall exactly when.

Dai Ho had the Italian place to the left and the lebanese place to the right (Kapital Kabab, later Ali Baba) for as long as I can recall, at least back to the mid 90s.

Dai Ho kinda died a long time ago, in the sense that the gentleman who used to run it left and started Asian Tiger upstairs when North Quarter opened in 2007. The company that owned Dai Ho branched out into a couple of other food outlets in Civic quite some time ago, not sure if either still exist.

It was so much cooler when you could smoke there, in black and white:

http://www.abc.net.au/corp/history/80years/videos/80years-act-MonaroMall.mp4

c_c™ said :

La_Tour_Maubourg said :

Where has the Greek food place gone?
I’d’ve also thought a new fountain would look great installed where the old one once was..

I don’t recall either a fountain or a greek food outlet.

Fountain: at the base of the once standing clock which ran up to the third level.. In front of where McDonald’s used to be. (Replaced by rotating TV)

Greek food outlet: Back left corner next to (the late) Dai Ho.

Went to the foodcourt just before 5pm hoping to get some Japanese goodies from Hanaichi to take home for dinner.

I was surprised at how busy the food court was at 5pm, and I waited about 10 mins to be served as there were probably a dozen people in the line. The length of the line made me question how it would function at during, as we basically cut off access to the rest of the food court. People either had to push through the line or walk all the way around the stupid looking white walls around the seating.

Anyhoo… 50% off all dishes made my dinner just that little bit more satisfying… May attempt to get lunch there tomorrow while the deal is still on.

I didn’t even know it was gone! Why is there a photo repeated twice?

Also, caves???

I quite liked it, good banh mi

So I went and had a look this afternoon, and it isn’t as bad as I’d feared. I think there’s at least as much seating, although the ‘caves’ are pretty awful, and there seems to be some different food in there, though nothing that jumped out at me as special.

I might try an early lunch down there tomorrow. As long as I don’t have to sit in a cave.

La_Tour_Maubourg said :

Where has the Greek food place gone?
I’d’ve also thought a new fountain would look great installed where the old one once was..

I don’t recall either a fountain or a greek food outlet.

Deref said :

Malls are horrible places, and food courts are the most horrible places in malls.

Yep, a horrible American import. Kind of strange that in a city where all the malls (except Tuggeranong Hyperdome, which still had fairly strict government control though) were planned, built and owned by the government, in a city where front fences aren’t allowed, all succumbed to the worst feature of malls – dead exteriors. Just can’t work out why the malls are all so insular and internally focused when the planning experts wouldn’t dare let even low decorative fences interfere with the vibrancy of the street scapes.