Side Dish Cafe

Good sandwiches. I go in there and the guy already knows what I want and starts making it. I like all the attention to detail on making the sandwiches and wrapping them properly.

I’m really disappointed in the buffet option of this place. Food was cold. Their penne chicken pasta tasted Indian spiced. Now I’m a fan of Indian food but not in my penne pasta. Their salad was fresh and was the only thing that was semi ok. Their meatballs were cold like everything else. I spent $ 12 and no free drink. Should have went upstairs to my kitchen because the food here is below mediocre.
Their deli sandwich was ok– I got the pastrami Reuben a few days ago and it was a ⁵⁄₁₀ at best. So disappointed I could barely my meal.

I love this place! I am so surprised by their low rating. I came here 3 times in 5 days while in JC for work training. I love the selection in the weigh your own section. The arabic salad, chicken tikka, lemon grilled chicken, and marinated mozzarella are all delicious. They have a great selection of veggies and salads. My coworker enjoyed a build-​you-​own panini.
They have lots of healthy options, are very quick, and the prices are affordable. If you spend $ 10 you get a free beverage. The owners are very nice and said hello after recognizing me. I think this is the best choice in the mall for a quick and healthy, yet tasty working lunch.

Ordered a veggie burger and mozzarella sticks a couple weeks ago, and came down with the worst food poisoning I’ve ever had. Not sure which item caused it, but I hadn’t eaten from anywhere else.

Cute small café. they have two bars one is bar salad and the other has hot food.(rice, chicken, fish, meatballs, eggplant etc.) You can pretty much pick whatever you want buffet style. On the hot food bar they also have two different soups (changes everyday) they also have a big area of drinks, yogurt, fruits, chips. On the other side they have all different types of sandwiches and paninis to choose from. They have a few tables for you to eat if you don’t want your food to go. The staff was friendly and everything was very well organized and clean. The prices are pretty good. I did not like the smell when I first walked in, it smelled like curry since that’s one of the choices they have on the hot food bar. I decided to try out their chicken parmigiana panini which comes with homemade chips & salsa and they were okay nothing serious I would’ve liked my panini a bit hotter but it wasn’t a big deal. The chips were okay too it wasn’t anything crazy. If Im in the mall again I would probably go back again

It was not bad for a first visit. They have a small salad bar and hot food corner with Indian food (yes, curry chicken and chicken 69). They also have a deli section if you want wraps, sandwiches and burgers. The only complain that I would have is the small seating area. I mean it’s a deli buffet place. My expectation is pretty low but decent food definitely.

Pretty average at best. The sandwich I got was decent but was small. The food was not great and most of the food that was out smelled bad and looked pretty awful.

Average deli, nothing special. They’d I serve breakfast until noon and may be one of the fewer places in the mall that do so.

Your average deli… smells delicious when you walk in. buffet has tons of options to choose from. Ordered tuna salad on whole wheat roll. rolls were hard not fresh. Tuna was ok… prices are fair

I used to enjoy coming to Side Dish Café for breakfast. Never really had any problems with the food, until I found pieces of cardboard in my pancakes. and it wasn’t just once, but twice… Word of advice: skip this place altogether. You never know what added «surprise» you’ll find in your food.

I love this place! This review is for the create your own salads.
I come here eeeeeevery day… because it’s really inexpensive, the staff is friendly and the salads are super fresh. A small salad with 4 toppings is $ 5.95. Yes. $ 5.95! My salads usually have 6 – 8 toppings (what? I’m a fatty.) with a drink my lunch is STILL under $ 10. They have a huge variety of toppings, including some surprising ones like pesto chicken, roasted portabello mushrooms, jalapenos and seasoned feta. Oh, and they DON’T upcharge for avocado! Plus all the dressings are Walden Farms (which means super low cal, fat free and gluten free). Seriously, I’m obsessed. I like that it is also right by the entrance to the mall (from Washington blvd) so you don’t have to deal with mall people. Lunch in this area is really sketchy, and the healthy options are absolutely lacking… so this was a welcome find.
I have yet to find another deli-​like place that can recreate the beauty of an NYC chopped salad… this place comes close, minus the chopping.
I had some items from the salad bar in the middle that were quite good once too… but it was steamed vegetables, some grilled chicken and a little greek salad so nothing too difficult. The sandwiches are the standard NYC bodega type on that pre-​grilled bread.
Oh, and they stock snacky stuff like greek yogurt, cottage cheese and string cheese sticks. (My protein-​craving heart is singing!)

if you have half hour to get egg sandwich, go to this place. the workers are lazy and do not take order until you wait 15+ minutes, even when they aren’t doing anything. the place has customers only because it’s closest to the doors.

Yet another place that now offers less for more. When this place was Natural Deli, the service, food and prices were much better. The setup was much better too. Now, you have no idea where the line begins, or ends. Logistically, this place is a nightmare. The food is now average. Today was the final straw. I literally asked the food preparer if the rolls had gotten smaller, he scratched his head, and said «yeah, it looks that way». Then proceeded to put on a miniscule amount of grilled chicken on said roll, which I also complained about. He looked me in the eye, and said, «this is enough chicken». How nice of him to make that determination for me. Anyway, the food is now bland, smaller, pricier, and unsatisfying. Another reviewer said that choices are limited in the area, and I agree, but there are still more options that provide better value and quality than this place. I am off Side Dish.
Update: Food has gotten better. Their salads are good, and priced right. The gyros are killer, and the sandwiches are now made better.

I don’t know if i would ever get anything from the buffet area, the food doesn’t look too good and they don’t have the glass that protects the food from people breathing on it. I have gotten a chicken parm sandwich and thats just ok, not great. Since there aren’t too many options in the area, once in a while I stop by here. I do however, find myself going to Subway over this place… and I am not crazy about subway either.

Repulsive!
I work in the area and during my lunch break I decided to pick up a quick salad from Side Dish, what a mistake! I’d rather starve that eat that crap again!
I mean how do you mess up a simple salad? For starters the mixed greens at the self serve buffet was so old, it was litterally wilted to a black slimy mess. The olives were also old and the (canned) red beans still had the slimy red liquid that it comes with. I shudder thinking about this…

The long-​suffering Newport Mall gets another unfortunate entry. This salad bar/​buffet joint seems to a reboot of a closed place at the same space. Like the earlier one, it offers an strange combo of Italian-​type stuff like ziti, miscellaneous American food and a few south Asian items.
I could forgive the tech confusion at the cash register as opening-​day-​type problems. I cannot forgive the steam table offerings that weren’t heated properly. Nothing like a cold meatball!
I got ziti, meatballs, corned beef, turkey and sausage. The quality was more or less generic corporate cafeteria — not bad, not good — but not a single item was hot. If they can’t get that right I really don’t trust them. On the bright side, the fruit salad was ok (I guess it’s better to get something that’s supposed to be cold.)
Let’s see if they have a longer lifespan than the terrible crêpe place upstairs.