Opened in 2013, the Downtown Market is the year-round indoor public market that quickly became one of the most successful food-destination projects in the Midwest. The market occupies a purpose-built steel and glass structure designed to feel simultaneously industrial and light-filled, with a rooftop greenhouse that produces food sold in the market below. Inside you will find local produce vendors, specialty food producers, an incubator kitchen where new food businesses develop their products, cooking schools, and a collection of restaurant stalls that bring together the remarkable culinary diversity of present-day Grand Rapids.
The city's food scene reflects its demographics: Mexican restaurants serving the large Latino community concentrated on the southwest side, Vietnamese and Burmese restaurants serving the Southeast Asian refugee communities that settled here after the 1970s, Ethiopian and Somali restaurants on the southeast side, and Dutch-inflected baked goods that go back to the earliest Reformed settlements. The Downtown Market functions as a kind of edible argument for the city's diversity, a place where you can taste what Grand Rapids has become in an afternoon.