Scott H.
Yelp
Emporium reminds me of a lot of malls in Asia - given the relatively small footprint of the building, it has a distinctly vertical orientation with shops situated on numerous different levels. But the way it's laid out is a bit confusing, with escalators placed seemingly haphazardly and without any thought given to the natural flow of traffic (the cynic in me thinks this design is intentional, to force people to walk by as many shops as possible). There's a pretty good selection of international shops here to choose from - aside from the anchors UNIQLO and Topshop, there's also a Muji, Superdry and a lot of designer options. I really don't understand why there's a UCLA store here. (Why would you wear hoodies and sweatpants from a school you didn't attend? What's the appeal here?)
The food court on the top floor has a great selection of stalls - Charlie and Co burgers, New Shanghai, Earl, Chinta Ria - serving up decent food at cheap prices. The problem is that, while the food court space is really interesting aesthetically, it's a bit dysfunctional. The layout with its curvilinear paths and oddly unnecessary steps creates bottlenecks when the place is busy and they didn't put in nearly enough seating to meet the demand. What were they thinking?
Now that it's mostly full it's definitely more interesting than in its early days but I'm hoping they do something to improve the seating and layout issues in the food court.