
A dish from Global Food Hall in Madison, Wisc. (Destination Madison)
Next to Madison’s best Asian grocery store is a food hall where you can eat your way across Asia and also enjoy Southwestern-style foods.
Near East Towne Mall in Madison’s Far East Side lies a relatively new food hall devoted to Asian cuisine. This year, it’s celebrating its fifth anniversary.
Due to its nine different food vendors, Global Market and Food Hall makes it easy to design a progressive meal that could feature tea, desserts, snacks, and main dishes in one swoop. In the center of these eateries is a spacious dining area where you can enjoy your culinary finds. Groups are well suited here as, like at any food hall, each person can order what they want and still dine together.
Even better, right next door to the food hall is Global Market, which is Madison’s largest Asian market. Here, you can pick up produce, meat, seafood, and other products—from tea to cookies—to make Asian meals at home.

Fresh produce at Global Market in Madison, Wisc. (Destination Madison)
From bubble tea to birria, here’s a guide about what you can expect at Global Market and Food Hall. Note: Menus are published on the Global Market and Food Hall website to help you plan your trip, with some even offering pre-arrival orders by phone or online.

One of the vendors at Global Market and Food Hall in Madison. (Destination Madison)
Global Market and Food Hall restaurants
1. Arods Tex Mex & American Grill
Arods Tex Mex & American Grill’s owner started making Southwestern-style food for friends and family during the pandemic, opening his culinary concept in 2021. On the menu are birria brisket tacos, tostadas, enchiladas, quesadillas, burritos, and chimichangas. Take away the decision-making with A Rod’s Combination Meals, folding in four items each.
2. Bowl Bowl Rice
There are 31 dishes on the menu at Bowl Bowl Rice, a spot specializing in delectable Cantonese cuisine. The menu is organized into sections like Rice Noodle Soup, Fried Rice & Rice Noodles, and Rice. While many dishes incorporate beef, pork, and chicken, there are also meat-free options loaded with vegetables. The side dishes are also unique, including delicacies like fish congee, jellyfish salad, and tea-leaf-flavored eggs.
3. Captain Frank
Delivering an authentic seafood boil, whether it’s snow-crab legs, crawfish, lobster, or stone crab, each order from Captain Frank comes with potato, corn, and sausage. You can also select your flavor: house special, Cajun, classic, garlic butter, and lemon butter. Meal prices are based on the price per pound of the seafood.
4. Dumpling House
Pan-fried and steamed dumplings are the name-sake specialty at Dumpling House, but you can also enjoy noodle soups (prepared with homemade noodles or as pho or udon) and Chinese buns (stuffed with ingredients like pork, taro paste, and red-bean paste). There’s a healthy mix of both meat and seafood options as well as those for vegetarians that are heavy on vegetables. Orders can also be amped up with extra of just about everything, from eel to noodles, as well as chicken or shredded beef.
5. Kawasaki
This Japanese eatery features around 30 different udon, ramen, curry, sushi, and teriyaki dishes. Sushi combos change daily and are a mix of sashimi and maki. Meals come with white rice, vegetables, spring rolls, soup of the day, and gyoza. Both meat and seafood lovers will be happy as the menu is quite diverse (with a few vegetarian options, to!).
6. Nice Flavor Stir Fry
As its name implies, stir fry is what you’ll order here, but even then, there are many options. Some of the most popular orders are Sichuan-style fry chicken with dry chili pepper, Kung pao chicken, and stir fry Shanghai noodles. On a hot day, or to balance out a hot dish (in temperature and spices), you may want to opt for cold-menu items such as shredded potato salad or beef tripe salad. Tilapia is a common fish used in the restaurant’s seafood selections, but ten menu items are meat-free, including mapo tofu and stir-fry Shanghai bok choy with garlic.
7. Saigon
Pho noodle dishes are the thrust of Saigon’s menu, with chicken, pork chop, beef tripe and steak as ingredients. You can also add these meats for an additional fee, making the dish even more meaty.
8. Saucy Rice
Rice bowls are the most significant category on Saucy Rice’s menu, but there are also plenty of hearty sides that can elevate a bowl, such as kimchi pork belly, fried jumbo shrimp, and charsiu pork. Each rice bowl comes with soup and an egg.
9. Sweet Hut
Sweet Hut is a great place to cap off your dining experience at the food hall, as the menu focuses on sweet, not savory. It includes bakery items that are common in Asian countries and cultures, like sponge cake, coconut bread, and scallion bread. There’s also a wide variety of boba (bubble) and milk teas that fold in equally sweet and flavorful ingredients, like matcha, pineapple, lavender, coconut, and mango. Yum!
This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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