New Midtown Food Hall Opens With Free Samples and...a Broadway Musical?

A new food hall outfitted with three sit-down restaurants, 11 food stalls, and two bars opens in Midtown this Friday, June 26 in the former Lord & Taylor Building that is now owned by Amazon. A private event on Tuesday, June 23 brought guests in for a peek.

Shaver Hall occupies the ground floor of what was once the flagship location of the famous department where dazzling Christmas window displays long lured shoppers into perfumed air. Amazon bought the building in March 2020 for $1.15 billion.

The upcoming food hall’s name is a tribute to the store’s famous 20th-century president, Dorothy Shaver. The store shuttered in 2019, and the country’s oldest department store became an online-only experience.

Amazon reopened the building in 2023 as its New York headquarters, rechristening it and the neighboring Drecier Building as “Hank.” To create Shaver Hall, it collaborated with Texas-based restaurant incubator FB Society and developer Seneca Group. While the hall was initially slated to open in late 2025, AJ Raje, Development Manager for Seneca Group, said various logistical challenges delayed the project. One challenge was renovating in a building where people work (some 2,000 “Amazonians” now work there).

The sit-down restaurants at Shaver Hall include Pick & Cheese, a wine bar that serves exclusively American cheeses under glass domes that travel to diners on a conveyer belt; Mako, an omakase lounge; and Tallow, a steakhouse named thus to emphasize its beef specificity—operations manager Thomas Monthofer said it will specialize in steak frites and not be serving chicken or fish. The name is fitting for 2026; in January, the FDA spotlighted beef tallow, a previously out-of-fashion cooking ingredient, in its updated national dietary guidelines. Disputable health benefits aside, tallow is often used for the flavor it imparts; British steakhouse Hawksmoor (109 E 22nd St.) also uses it in its fries.

Other eateries at the former retail mecca come from existing New York City brands. A quick sampling includes Brooklyn-based Biddrina Gelato—which is featured on restaurant dessert menus but now making its brick-and-mortar debut—and Chef Jun Park’s Upper West Side Korean fried chicken spot, Chick Chick, which is launching its second location.

Aesthetically, Shaver Hall’s interior recalls an upscale airport terminal: at the center, an island bar and rows of slim, high counters with in-built outlets. At the sides, vendors with names in backlit block lettering. There’s a Duty Free-like “bodega” that sells specialty products and a wall where drinks are available on tap, literally—customers draw their own beer, wine, and cider by tapping rechargeable cards on sensors above the spouts. It’s fitting for Midtown: slick, grand, not too cozy—somewhere to stop on one’s way. There are also details reminiscent of the Lord & Taylor store: window displays with jewelry, black and gold plaques from the old store.

The Tuesday-evening preview culminated in a performance on the site’s central structure: an entertainment stage, equipped for performances and sports watch parties. FB Society executives, along with a representative from Amazon and a local councilmember, promoted the hall as a tribute to “bad-ass businesswomen.” They then introduced what they called a preview of a new Broadway musical celebrating Dorothy Shaver, the “first female to run a multi-million dollar business in the United States.”

The 15-minute show, presented by Broadway Dreams, was a beaming business fairy tale: a retelling of Dorothy Shaver’s journey from her small city in Arkansas to NYC, where she spun new life into the fabric of Lord & Taylor. Ryan Ratelle of Broadway Dreams clarified there is no full musical in production yet, though he said “there’s legs” and that Shaver’s story is interesting enough to make something fit for Broadway. For the final song, the performers at Shaver Hall belted, “Welcome to the Store!” into a cheering audience with free food and drink samples in hand.

Shaver Hall officially opens at 3 p.m. June 30. Regular operating hours will be 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday.