Marketplace Café

Marketplace Café was an unexpected find tucked away in the giant Nordstrom at GSP. I can only comment on the salads, but they had a creative mix of salad options that were delicious. The cilantro chicken salad was very good, but I have to deduct stars since there wasn’t a lot of chicken and in general the salad was on the small side. I’d also recommend the shrimp/​polenta salad.

This is in my top 3 favorite places to get food at Garden State Plaza. It’s probably one of the quieter places as well, so if you want a break from the noise of GSP, come grab lunch here. You can choose to dine-​in, or order take-​out directly. For both, you order at the counter, and if you’re dining in, they will bring it to your table. The food never takes too long to come out.
My favorite dish here is the Chicken Pasta Rossa. You absolutely must try it. It actually tastes so much better than a lot of the pasta dishes that you might find in fancier, more expensive restaurants out there. The chicken itself is tender, and the tomatoes and assortment of greens included in the dish combine to give it such rich flavor. The sauce itself is very creamy, and binds perfectly with the pasta itself.
The Roasted Chicken very delicious as well, and is seasoned with garlic and rosemary, which adds to the taste without overpowering anything. They have pizza here as well, which are pretty small in terms of portion, but still worth a try. The Margherita pizza is my favorite.
There is wait service here, but they don’t do too much. You order at the counter, and the waiters/​waitresses will bring you your food to the table, and fill up your water every now and then. Sometimes it’s hard to get their attention when there are lots of people, but at this place, you don’t really need the waiters because you pay and order at the front. Nevertheless, during the few interactions that I have had with the wait staff, they have always been friendly.
If this place were close to my house as a stand alone restaurant, I would come here all the time.

Back in the day, Nordstrom has 3 restaurants. Upstairs was The Garden Court which was decidedly upscale. They were open for lunch and dinner and featured top quality continental fare at decent prices. The Pub on main floor was just that, a recreation of an English bar complete with dark wood décor and backless chairs. I loved the Pub. It was a destination restaurant, meaning that their clientele wasn’t limited to shoppers. People actually made a special trip to eat and drink there. Downstairs was more of a cafeteria set up called The Café. The restaurant was casual and inexpensive; the perfect place to grab a quick bite while shopping.
Today, it’s all that remains and is still a solid choice for great food at reasonable prices. Their soups, salads and sandwiches are all awesome. Interestingly, they’re never all that crowded, despite the fact that they are probably my favorite eatery in the entire mall. I usually opt for a salad, most likely the Grilled Chicken/​Strawberry/​Walnut which is epic. Fresh grill chicken is tossed with candied walnuts and plump strawberries. It is not only my favorite salad here, it’s probably my favorite anywhere which really is saying a lot.
Setup is casual but efficient. Walk up to the counter, place your order and a server brings it to your table along with your drinks. The meal actually ends on a high note when they bring you the check. There, tucked in the check presentation envelope are these wrapped chocolate straw things that are frigging awesome. You can even ask for more if you’d like. All in all, if you are shopping at The Garden State Plaza and want to eat delicious, fresh and healthy food, pay them a visit. You’ll be more than happy.

This is a great place to stop for a really delicious and high quality lunch. We were shopping with MIL and had planned to go out to a local diner, when she actually remembered that I’d brought her here once before! My husband had never been and was skeptical but said ok. He was very pleasantly surprised!
You order at the counter, but they bring it to you at the table. Three of us shared 2 excellent sandwiches — turkey w cranberries on ciabatta, and the grilled veggies with cheese. Veggie one a wee bit greasy, but both absolutely delicious (& I was with an 89-​year-​old who isn’t easy to please!)!
Choice of chips or salad with sandwich, so we ordered both with salad. Nice portions. Friendly service, brought glasses of water and a sharing plate when we asked.

This is my favorite place to go just before my work at 1 Me and my girl we always have a nice time there and the food is good the only issue is the menu has very limited choices that’s what cost them a star other than that the service is usually upto par and very friendly it’s not like it’s fine dinning so you shouldn’t expect so much attention but they do work enough just make it easy on the customers and get the water when the glass is empty. They also serve alcohol which is great which many jersey place do not. My favorite thing to eat here is the bruschetta pizza which is amazing and I also love their garlic crostinis which are always fresh. Overall it’s a reely good place and we keep going back.

This may be best place to eat at Garden State. There is a lovely menu with salads, pastas, seafood, beer and wine, and a quieter atmosphere than the food court. We had great risotto with shrimp and asparagus for $ 10.75, Chinese chicken salad for $ 9.50 and salmon with grilled veggies for $ 12. Salmon and shrimp were fresh, and veggies were freshly grilled. Nice service too. Skip the food court and come here.

Very nice alternative to the restaurants and the food court. Enjoyed a salad and my friend had the soup du jour and the spicy Pasta Bolognese. All fresh and delicious. Service was impeccable. Kudos Nordstrom!

A good place for a quick for expensive bite while shopping! Worth a try if you’re in a rush!

WORST STAFF AWARD! Went in this week after shopping with a friend for a drink and a small bite to eat before leaving the mall. We ordered our food from the cashier and when we sat down a waitress with the initial T came up to the table with such a RUDE ATTITUDE I felt like walking out right away. We received our food and it was ACTUALLY TASTY and HIT THE SPOT. The whole time we were eating our waitress was over by the chefs window DANCING and SINGING and NOT PAYING ATTENTION to us and we went the whole meal WITHOUT A REFILL or even her asking how is everything. When we finished our meal we were so APPALLED with the service we got up and were not leaving a tip. She then rushed over and said excuse me gratuity was not included and I continued to walk away and she mumbled CHEAP BITCH to me. I then asked for the manager and she said he was not in but I could speak to her because she was the manager on duty. I said I wanted to speak to someone higher up and she said TED was her boss and he does not deal with this DRAMA. I then repeated so TED is your boss and she replied yes. I then asked another waitress to speak to TED and she said he was in his office and she would get him. After several minutes the waitress came out and said could I write my info down because he was BUSY. I have NOT received a call back yet and have called two times and every time the person who answers rushes me off the phone. So TED if you read this and you are not to BUSY, CHECK YOUR MESSAGES and CALL ME BACK and DO YOUR JOB and CLEAN HOUSE of your RUDE STAFF. YOU obviously need to take a management class on how to run a Café and do your job as your Café is always dead and most likely from your rude staff. Maybe if you were out on the floor supervising and doing MANAGING 101, you would of seen this incident and corrected it. I will be in touch with your Human Resources this week to talk about this. NO CUSTOMER SHOULD EVER BE CALLED A CHEAP BITCH BY SOME IGNORANT WAITRESS THAT CANT EVEN DO HER JOB CORRECTLY.

I have never had a bad meal or coffee break in this Nordstrom café’ and the staff is efficient at cleaning up after diners depart. Order and pay at the counter and take your receipt to the table of your choice where your server will take the receipt and serve your food, taking care to note any requests you have and deliver items as desired such as dessert after the meal, soup first and so forth.
Roma Tomato soup is always on the menu along with a rotating soup of the day.
The homemade parmesan crustini which comes with the tomato soup is my favorite.
Nice selection of composed entre’e salads and creative sandwiches. A few hot entre’es like grilled chicken and grilled salmon with roasted vegetables. Some brick oven pizza selections and a children’s menu of typical fare, chicken fingers, hot dog, and grilled cheese.
A few decadent cakes-​always a good chocolate cake either fudgy or mouse like.
They changed from Republic of Tea products to another brand the managers taste tested and preferred. I am partial to Republic of Tea’s offering so I just have the coffee here now, which is good.
The servers work for tips since they do deliver the food and cater to the customers even if the ordering is at the counter and I have on hesitation tipping the same as i would in a typical table service restaurant as the service tends to be well above average and quite attentive.
I have been to a Nordstrom’s where the restaurant staff are not industrious and efficient and that is not the case at Garden State Plaza-​their staff is great.

Went here early in the morning after Black Friday’s and this was a pretty ok place. The waiter was good and extremely nice. The place was clean (which was to be expected because we were the first ones here at 7am). Order the Tomato Basil soup which was pretty above average. The Cilantro Chicken Salad which was very good and loved the dressing. The Tuna Salad Sandwich which was ok.
One down side was that the portions were pretty small and the wait to get the food was a little long.
Overall, ok nice and quiet place to eat when you shop at Nordstrom.

Horrible customer service (from whom I later found out was the manager). It’s not worth my time writing about what happened. I gave it one star because that was the only way I could post the review, otherwise this establishment would score zero.

I did not know about Nordstrom having an indoor café until I found out someone that I know works here. So I gave them a visit and try their food.
The workers told me that they’re food is all organic, home made (Sauce/​desserts/​dressings etc) so i’ve had high hopes for the food. The pricing is decent being in a mall. Everything I’ve had there did not leave a good taste in my mouth.
I personally had their Tomato soup with bread with mozzarella cheese and their chocolate chip cake.
The Tomato Soup came hot like expected (Which is great considering lots of places serve their soup semi hot) but I must say that the soup was not tasty at all. The soup was very salty and felt like my mouth was itching for anything to make it easier on my mouth.
The chocolate chip cake felt very bland, tough, crunchy (at least the chocolate portion). I’m not a personally a cake eater of any kind but this cake did not make me satisfy at all.
I agree with the previous person that the review. If you are here for the casual coffee and chat, the staff here are very friendly and welcoming. I’m not sure about the quality of food though being in a mall with a food court and several other eating places (including cafes such as e-​bar, starbucks etc).

Unilocal really needs to start allowing users to give negative stars because this place isn’t worthy of 1.
This place is ridiculous. I am still FUMING mad at what happened here today. I wrote an extremely long review. So long, in fact, that it couldn’t fit in the limits of Unilocal.
My whole review can be found here:
I still can’t believe this place. I am livid.