NC State Fairgrounds gets ‘Restaurant Row’ glow-up with a shiny new food hall
For culinary thrill-seekers, the North Carolina State Fair is a once-a-year delight.
But what if you could eat at the fairgrounds every day?
That dream will soon be a reality, as the Triangle’s newest food hall will open at the NC State Fairgrounds next year.
The Midway Event Center is slated to open before the 2026 State Fair, according to fair director Kent Yelverton.
New renderings of the food hall show a sleek and sharp two-story modern building, with an expansive patio for outdoor dining and large sloping roof.
“We are excited about it,” Yelverton said in a phone interview. “It’s going to be a beautiful building that people will have the opportunity to come and enjoy every day.”
Historically the NC State Fair is a 10-day celebration of North Carolina agriculture.
But it’s also the state’s largest food festival, with hundreds of thousands of fry-loving diners flocking for footlong corndogs, funnel cakes and deep-fried Twinkies.
“Certainly food plays a huge role in the fair,” Yelverton said. “The North Carolina State Fair is well known for our food variety — it’s one of the leading things people enjoy, the unique and often once-a-year foods.”
But beyond the fair there are more than 300 other events each year, Yelverton said. The new food hall will cater to those visitors, as well as the lunch and dinner crowd of western Raleigh.
The new food hall will have eight full-time vendors on long-term leases, plus four stalls for temporary pop-ups. There will also be a full service bar, offering the fairgrounds’ first consistent alcohol sales.
The fairgrounds will hire an operator to run the food hall and bar, Yelverton said, who will then sign the individual food vendors.
“Here we’ll likely see vendors that offer more of a local food experience,” Yelverton said. “We look for the food component (of the Midway Event Center) to be the thing that brings people together. We all like to bring people together around food.”
This is a major glow-up for the fairgrounds, as the food hall will replace the beloved but aging “restaurant row.”
The sheet metal building dated back to the 1960s and was best known for churches and civic groups selling bites at the fair — namely ham biscuits. Restaurant row was closed after the 2023 fair.
The new Midway Event Center will be built in its place, with renderings showing the gondola carriages passing by. Fair organizers believe the modern update will help make the fairgrounds inviting all year long.
“We feel like this is a great way for the NC State Fair to additionally connect with our community,” Yelverton said. “This offers something for everyone.”
This story was originally published March 28, 2025 at 1:51 PM with the headline "NC State Fairgrounds gets ‘Restaurant Row’ glow-up with a shiny new food hall."
