It hits you all at once when you enter Toronto’s Waterworks Food Hall: the scintillating aromas, the shopfront-style signs pulling you in all directions to various kiosks, the overwhelming excitement of being in a modern bazaar. There is the compulsion to try everything, to sample the myriad goods on offer — from fragrant stuffed naan to soul-satisfying ramen — under the constellation of vibrant floating spheres.

When it finally opened in July after years of preparation, the food hall met the public’s anticipation with an expression of gregarious energy. This labour of love, shared by a notable group of Toronto developers, architects, designers and food brands, feels attuned both to its immediate setting in a heritage building and to the broader context. It arrives at a time when the food hall typology is already thriving in the city: From the recently inaugurated culinary hub at The Well to the nearby Chefs Hall and the outdoor World Food Market at Yonge/Dundas, downtown eating is more eclectic than ever. All of this healthy competition does not worry Eve Lewis, whose firm, Woodcliffe Landmark Properties, together with MOD Developments, brought the project to life. “I think it’s exciting. The more the merrier,” she told me as we toured the building pre-opening. 

The art deco features of the Waterworks building were preserved in its transformation into a food hall.

Lewis and her team spent eight years travelling to an estimated 50 of the world’s best food halls, in places like London, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Madrid
and New York. From that international journey, they came back more determined than ever about what mattered most: the local and specific. The almost 20 kiosks that line the centre of the Waterworks Food Hall are mostly homegrown businesses, from the wine brand Grape Witches (which burgeoned during the pandemic) to Harry’s Charbroiled (by prolific restaurateur Grant van Gameren). 

Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist Jacquie Comrie created the colourful swirl of a planet that hangs in the skylit space between Pizzeria Popolo and Taco Lupita.

The food hall’s interior layout, by Cecconi Simone, emphasizes cohesion while allowing each stall to stand out. The all-black kiosks are similar in size and outward appearance but bear details — from tile treatments to lighting — that convey their individual texture up close. Stephen Fong Architect, Futurestudio (which also created the courtyard patio–adjacent Lee Restaurant and the bespoke food hall venues of Civil Works and Grape Witches) and DesignAgency realized the vision based on Lewis’s desire for each vendor to have its own personality. (BUILD IT by Design was the contractor in charge of the kiosks.)

The kiosk architecture communicates a cohesive design language…

…while the eateries feature unique finishes and light fixtures to give them — and the entire space — a feeling of fine-grained texture.

Most essential to the project was the preservation and update of its 4,180-square-metre base building, which was actually constructed on the site of an earlier social venue — the St. Andrew’s Market — that stood from 1837 until it was decommissioned in the 1920s. The art deco gem that replaced it dates to 1932. Diamond Schmitt, the firm that led the restoration project (and its much larger scope, which included the residential development embedded in the building), worked with the consultants at ERA. The aim was to maintain its characteristic rawness.

“It was a public works hub, built as a Depression-era project with federal, provincial and city funding,” explains Annie Pelletier, an associate at ERA. “It was designed by the city architect back when Toronto had a city architect.” “We didn’t really sanitize it. We’ve just cleaned it up,” says Pelletier. They retained its main materials and celebrated found objects — the woodblock floor was repurposed for the walls of the stairwells where old moulds of plumbing patterns are now displayed as art — and reinserted existing details that had been obscured over time. 

A server at Musoshin Ramen.

The woodblock-lined stairway displaying plumbing moulds.

At some point in the past, the skylights had been completely boarded over, so the team uncovered them and applied a new, energy-efficient glazing. They also found a company that could reproduce the black-framed, hot-rolled steel windows (many of which had been covered up by brick) that soar from floor to ceiling in vertical bands on the building’s south side. And they repositioned a set of art deco gates, once located on Maud Street, to the Richmond Street courtyard entrance. The most dramatic intervention is underneath it all: To keep the back of house out of sight, the team dug a basement for the building. “They set back from the historic walls and excavated down,” says Pelletier.

Some of the team members that collaborated on the project gather at one of the banquettes. From left: MOD Developments’ Noorez Lalani, architect Steven Fong, MOD’s Gary Switzer, Diamond Schmitt’s Donald Schmitt, Anna Simone of Cecconi Simone, Woodcliffe Landmark Properties’ Eve Lewis, ERA Architects’ Andrew Pruss, and Futurestudio’s Milda Miskinyte and Ali McQuaid Mitchell.

At the food hall’s inauguration, its potential to be an electric new cultural destination in the city was palpable. Moving from kiosk to kiosk and taking their perches at the tables, bar stools and counters, patrons were able to enjoy everything that makes Toronto’s culinary scene the ultimate expression of our multiplicity. Reaching even greater heights was the custom artwork created for the space under the curation of Studio Ninth. Artists including Jacquie Comrie and Priscilla Yu painted orbs of various sizes that float down from the skylit ceiling. It’s the perfect final ingredient for a food hall that exudes authenticity, plurality and attention to detail.