Places To Eat Near Me in DTLA: Splitting Grand Central Market

Grand Central Market has been at 317 South Broadway since 1917 and currently holds more than forty vendors, which makes it the best and worst place in Downtown Los Angeles to bring a group. Best, because there is genuinely something for everyone — decades-old taquerias, a Chinese counter that has been there since 1959, a deli, a modern egg-sandwich counter with a queue, and a bar in the middle of it. Worst, because forty options plus five people equals forty minutes of standing in the middle of the hall while nobody decides. The solution is not to pick a stall. It is to stop trying to eat together in the normal sense, and split up properly.

Forty stalls and a group that cannot agree is a coordination problem, not a food problem. Ask Karpo how to divide up Grand Central Market for the people you are bringing.

This is the whole strategy in one sentence. Seating is communal and first-come, and at peak the shortage of tables is a bigger constraint than the length of any queue. One person claims a table, everyone else queues.

It also fixes the problem of coming back to find your group has moved. In a hall this size and this loud, with a mezzanine and multiple entrances, finding four people again is not trivial.

The corollary: whoever holds the table orders last, and someone else brings them something. Assign that before you split up, not afterwards.

The counters run at completely different speeds. A taqueria that has been doing the same three things since the 1970s serves faster than a modern counter building sandwiches to order, and the queue lengths reflect popularity rather than wait time.

So do not walk the whole group to one stall and then to the next. Split into pairs or singles, agree who is getting what, and reconvene at the table. Four people queueing in parallel covers four stalls in the time it takes a group to do one.

Put the longest queue on the most patient person. The egg-sandwich counter in particular runs a queue that is disproportionate to what it is serving, and it is worth exactly one person's time rather than everyone's.

The interesting division at this market is not Mexican versus Chinese versus American. It is old versus new. There are stalls here that predate almost every restaurant in Los Angeles and stalls that opened in the last few years, and eating both in one sitting is the actual experience of the building.

The 1959 Chinese counter and the decades-old taquerias are the old side. Eggslut and Wexler's Deli are the modern side. A table with both on it tells you more about Downtown than either does alone.

Order in dishes rather than in meals. Nobody needs a full plate each; a table of shared things from six counters at four dollars to fifteen dollars a plate is how the market is designed to be eaten.

The market is open 8am to 9pm daily, but individual vendor hours vary — which is the single most important caveat here. A stall you came for may not be open at nine in the morning or at half past eight at night even though the building is.

If there is one specific counter driving the trip, check its hours rather than the market's. This is a building of forty independent businesses, not one operation with a single roster.

The quiet windows are early morning and the middle of the afternoon. Weekday lunch is the busiest hour and Sunday afternoon is a close second.

317 South Broadway, in the historic core of Downtown Los Angeles, directly across from the Bradbury Building and at the foot of Angels Flight, which runs up the hill towards Bunker Hill and the Broad.

That location makes it the natural lunch in a downtown walking day. Market, Bradbury lobby, Angels Flight up the hill, and you are at the museums — none of which needs a car.

Pershing Square station is a few minutes away on the B and D lines. Driving means a garage, and the ones nearby price by the hour in a way that punishes a long lunch.

Address: 317 South Broadway, Los Angeles. Open daily 8am to 9pm; individual vendor hours vary. Over 40 vendors. A downtown landmark since 1917.

Seating is communal and first-come. No reservations anywhere in the building.

Vendors range from decades-old taquerias and a Chinese counter dating to 1959 to newer arrivals like Eggslut and Wexler's Deli. Check a specific stall's hours before planning around it.

Tags: #LosAngeles #DTLA #GrandCentralMarket #PlacesToEatNearMe #DowntownLA #Broadway #FoodHall #LAEats #Since1917 #Tacos #MarketFood #GroupDining

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Ask Karpo how to divide Grand Central Market between the people you are bringing, which counters are open at the hour you are going, and what to do on Broadway either side of lunch.