We Were Blown Away By The Cuisine At A New Gourmet Food Court In Hell's Kitchen [PHOTOS]

Imagine if your dining room was 15,000 square feet and contained eight miniature restaurants, staffed by world renowned chefs serving artisanal food and drink, all day, every day.

This is the unusual amenity enjoyed by tenants of Gotham West, the new luxury apartment complex tucked into the back pocket of Hell's Kitchen.

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Located way out on 11th Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets, Gotham West Market is a large, glassed-in food market spanning the ground floor. It exists because of the building's inconvenient address. When the developers were designing it, they wanted to include a high-quality, immersive dining experience for tenants (and to lure prospective renters so far west).

They reached out to several specialty grocers, who were all turned off by the odd space configuration, said Christopher Jaskiewicz, chief operating officer of Gotham Organization, Inc. "So we decided to curate our own market," Jaskiewicz told Business Insider. His team spoke with 50 operations before narrowing it down to an elite nine, which would set up shop inside (Little Chef has since left the building).

So far, it's working. From the moment patrons walk through the glass doors, Gotham West Market offers an immersive experience - allowing visitors to watch as their food is prepared before their eyes, and providing direct access to the cooks' encyclopedic knowledge of the menu. It has become not just a convenient dining option for tenants, but a destination for all New Yorkers, including the business lunch crowd, weekend travelers, and tourists.

So if people are going out of their way to sample the gourmet purveyors, is Gotham West Market really a food court after all?

"We never use the word 'food court' because of the connotation it has," Jaskiewicz says. "But if someone wrote 'the best food court ever built,' we'd take that. Maybe we are."