Market Bistro

Staff does not turn people away when they show up to the 15 or less isle with a full cart, creating a huge hold up.

Food court meets grocery store!
Even if this were just a grocery store, it would be a damn good grocery store! They have a huge selection of everything. The store is immaculately clean, the bakery serves some of the best baked goods, cases of fresh pasta and sausage, and the cashiers are pretty friendly.
However, what makes this even better is that they have a food court inside! Too lazy to cook after doing grocery shopping? Pick up some ready-​made dinner! Just got done with a workout and want a snack before getting the week’s food essentials? Pick up a salad at salad bar! Whatever the situation, whatever you’re hungry for, you are bound to find something to eat right away. While I’ve only been there once, I did try a few things from a few of the different «stations.» Everything was good. From a Pastrami Sandwich to Pizza to Chicken Strips, all more than suitable.

Instant good food without a wait on a Sat. night. PLUS a great selection and interesting enough to please my picky daughter.
That alone gets a grocery store 4 stars.
We fed 4 people and took some home for $ 42… not bad.
I was happy to see the chicken liver from the Slingerlands deli here and got a half sandwich with egg, bacon, LTO, mustard and mayo on rye. It was very good and came with a crunchy garlic pickle and chips. My wife got a chicken dinner with 3 sides. She liked it and brought much of the heaped up sides home. My daughter got their calamari and fries, their cocktail sauce has a good amount of horseradish and the fresh lemon was good as well. The son had a po’boy sandwich with fries, and it disappeared quickly.
Everyone liked the Coke product mixing station.

Price choppers latest branding idea. Food is okay. Reasonable prices and large selection. Freshly prepared or to order. Taste just okay from so-​so ingredients. At he end of the day it’s just a fancy price chopper.

While I understand it’s Christmas Eve so naturally it will be busy. They have enough staff but the problem is the staff are too busy stocking then taking care of the guest! You can renovate all you want but if you don’t focus on operations/​customer service, you will always fail

I only wanted to check it out since I never been here. Whoa! So much to see and do. It was beautiful, clean, and amazing! I’ll have to come back when I can spend more time there. Very nice store.

I have mixed feelings about Market Bistro because there are some things they do great, while there are others things that need to be worked on.
I’ll start with the good — I think the Bistro Blvd (glorified food court) is awesome! You’re not going to get 5 star fine dining, but there are a ton of options and really something to satisfy anyone. Some of the items I’ve sampled include their subs, quesadillas, burritos, salads, and mac and cheese from the bbq section. I’ve really enjoyed everything I’ve tried and I think their prices are quite reasonable. The subs are great, they’re jam packed with meat, and they have numerous choices for breads to have.
I like the Italian section of the store, but feel that these specialty items should be purchased from specialty markets owned and operated by Italians who really know their product.
The store is pretty much a one stop shop in that they have pretty much any grocery item you can think of.
In general, workers are very friendly.
The bad — Their renovation seemingly made their aisles even smaller, so good luck trying to do any quick grocery shopping on the weekend. It’s not someplace you can just get in and out.
Their grocery prices seem high compared to other grocery stores in the area. If you look out for weekly specials, and added bonuses for gas savings that helps.
I’ve done the online ordering for pick up before, and have had some issues. Kind of defeats the purpose.
They need more bottle return machines. I’ve gone on a weekend and have had to wait quite a while because an entire family is taking up every machine with their life size garbage bags of bottles and cans.

I love market bistro. I love the variety of offerings in the food court. The wait time is reasonable as well as the price. Can’t say that about some of the area restaurants. The Italian market section has an awesome selection of meats. The store is very neat and clean. The associates and very friendly and always there to help. I love to shop there

Shop 4U, be careful and check your receipt for pricing. They over charged me for many items. The reason they gave was that since the order was delivered today that the items mischarged weren’t on sale any longer. I explained that when I placed me order they were on sale and I was promised that price. She also substituted some items for higher priced items after calling for permission and promising to price match. She told me, «I’ll give you your money back this time but in the future…» Whoa! This was your mistake. If you want me to bring everything back keep threatening my future business! She was incompetent at best. Check your receipt, I even found a 19 cent discrepancy, you will too. Let the seller beware! They owed me $ 17.67 when I was done examining what price they promised and what price they charged.

My girlfriend and I came here to check this place out, we stopped by the food court and grabbed a soft shell crab roll and a clam roll. It was good and flavorful on the soft shell crab but the fried clam roll was very greasy. It seems like they didn’t let the oil drain enough before serving it on the bun. The whole bun looked like it had been dipped in the deep fryer. We didn’t bother eating the bun and just picked the clams out.
I had circled around to the sushi department in my eyes the selections are very limited and I wish they had Uni, maybe there isn’t a big enough market for Uni in the capital region.
During the time I was in the sushi section I got hassled by a Christian recruiter! I had told him that I was not religious but he kept on forcing his beliefs on me. I guess that is just part of his job.
The italian section with a wide selection of cured meat and cheese looked good but everything else in the store it was «ok». I probably wouldn’t come back here as you can get better stuff outside the market at selected stores around the area.
We only grabbed a handful of items to check out and the check out time took a while, there were wayyyyy toooo manyyyy people here especially on a Friday night. It is definitely not worth the time to shop here. It’s a very crowded place.

Their Eat in offers an «Amazing Brunch“at a reasonable price! Staff is very friendly. The Supermarket is more of a «WHOLE-​FOODS» cheap knockoff and prices are inflated. It helps that they open 24 hours.

Like someone else mentioned, it’s very like Wegmans. Even better. It has separate sections for different groceries and offers an area to sit down and dine. There’s also a Starbucks inside the market which is definitely a plus!

Mixed review. For grocery shopping, I don’t favor this store. It’s crowded, there’s not enough room in the aisles. It’s hard to find things, however, you can find just about ANYTHING in this store. If you are looking for speciality items, they probably have it. They have a large assortment of ethnic foods and that can be fun. The produce section is very nice, pricey, but nice.
As for the restaurant portion, it’s basically an over priced food court. The positive is that if you go with your family, everyone can find something they like. The seating can get congested and sometimes difficult. The prices are a bit high for grocery store food, however the portions are quite generous. The order and checkout is confusing. They’ve changed it a few times and it’s still awkward. The customer service in this part of the store is pretty good. The seafood department in the food court portion is good, the soup is ok. The salad and subs are generously sized and made to order (as is most of the foods there). They serve Perry’s ice cream, which is pretty good.
The added Starbucks is a plus for me, as I like to have a beverage while I shop.
We’ve eaten at the Chef’s grill for breakfast only, twice. It is fair. The menu is good, but the food quality is not. $ 18 for breakfast for two is a little steep for the quality of the food. I probably wouldn’t go back for the Chef’s grill.
They’ve definitely stepped up the game for their chain. It’s a destination grocery store.

I’m generally not a big fan of Price Chopper as I find their grocery prices to be higher priced than average for the area. There are exceptions when they put something on special but I really hate playing search for the best price game. The Market Bistro I find enjoyable as it’s clean, well run and has a large selection of prepared food either for lunch or dinner and take out or eat in. If I had to pick my favorite it would be Bill and Ben’s deli as I’m a large fan of NYC style deli’s and they are rare in the capital district. If you’re in the Latham area on Route 9 it’s well worth a visit. The selection is huge and I think you’ll enjoy more than some of the nearby franchise restaurants and with some items better pricing.

The nicest thing about Market Bistro in the Latham Price Chopper is that it offers a different environment. It’s not a Wegman’s, it’s not a Fresh Market, it’s not a Hannaford nor is it a Shop Rite nor a Seven Eleven. Maybe I’ll tire of it a year or five from now, but right now, it offers me an alternative I didn’t have before. I like that.
I also like the Growler filling station where I can buy a quart of Ubu ($ 4.99 without a coupon) for less than the price of a pint at most pubs. I also like the Triple Decker Sandwiches from Ben & Bill’s Deli. Two of the sandwiches on their menu are the same as what the old Joe’s Deli offered on Madison Avenue in Albany (the Vincentian and the Londoner). But my wife and I decided to share The Special ($ 9.49) — imported ham, Swiss cheese, roast turkey, lettuce, tomato, and Russian dressing on rye. It was served with a crisp pickle and possibly the crispiest potato chips I’ve ever had. We’re likely to try another of the Triples in the future.
Recently, I also picked up a full rack of the smoked ribs at the Market Bistro ($ 19.99) to bring home. While they were not totally fall-​off-​the-​bone tender, they were tender enough and nicely smoked.
What’s NOT nice about Market Bistro? The crowds if you have to go during prime shopping time — I usually don’t! Another pet peeve, is the short, double-​decker shopping carts where the bottom basket protrudes forward more than the upper basket. I keep hitting things with that lower basket, including the back of my wife’s legs.

So I haven’t eaten here yet, only food shopped. I was very over whelmed upon walking in. Stations and people EVERYWHERE. The meat section seemed very small. They had a lot of organic fruits and veggies, and they also had tomato vines where they grow and sell the tomatoes! Pretty cool. A lot to look at.
They also had a Starbucks and an Ice cream place inside.

The in and out of an attempt to redesign (reboot? remake?) Price Chopper into a competitor for «high end» grocery stores can be summarized in two words: fish stench.
There’s basically two components to this stab to go someplace parallel, if not on the same track, as the Wegman’s and Whole Foods and maybe Fresh Markets out there, all of which are encroaching into the Capital Region, as we prepare in these parts to enter the 21^st century.
The parts are what amounts to basically a food court, with burgers/​sushi/​fish fry/​deli sandwich/​pizza/​substore options, plus an unironically named «sit down» restaurant called the Chef’s Grill.
The second part is a remade grocery store, with imitation wood floors and better lighting and jazzier bad signage.
I hate to rain on the parade here but when you look past the fact the menus are on computer screens this is pretty much just a run of the mill Price Chopper and a run of the mill mall food court. I am very tempted to add a fourth star to the venture for having the two combined into one destination grocery shopping zone — the kids certainly think they love to come here, but I suspect it’s for the whirl-​a-​gig and the delusion they’re going to be able to pick anything they want from the food court, excuse me, bistro — but that’s when we get back to Fish Stench.
I sort of like the smell of a large seafood place (think Pike Place market) with its authentic briny, fishy whiff. But I don’t like it when I’m sitting down to a non-​fish lunch, which is what we got here because of the really poorly-​designed seating area for the mall food court (excuse me: bistro dining experience) that is cheek and jowl with the fish counter and right in the downwind area of the store’s HVAC system.
That is emblematic of the general lack of attention to planning traffic flow and space in this store. The entrances are stuck at ends of the building making ingress and egress difficult without crowds, and a painful exercise with crowds (and every pensioner in the Latham area seems to be coming in here to shop in the morning at present, to add to the traffic delights in both the parking lot and, ouch my aching knees that got hit by shopping carts thrice, in the store).
The aisles are mostly the traditional long, rectilinear organization of yore. The produce department has been opened up a bit, but they have made the shopping experience grotesque by requiring circulating in the «bistro» and readymade section for some foods (hummus, deli items, bakery, fish, et alia), with cart in tow if you have one. The checkouts weren’t rethought at all, ala Trader Joe’s system or the occasional Hannaford’s in the area that employees the single-​queue for all-​registers dispatch method to speed you through checkout.
And then they failed to widen the aisles out: you simply cannot pass in many areas of the store, and with the meandering clientele it roughly doubles the amount of shopping time.
All of which I would gladly put up with if the quality was higher. But it’s not there. There just aren’t that many new brands or options here compared to a regular Price Chopper; they crammed an aisle with «natural» items (packaged foods) without as much variety as the shorter similar aisle at Shop Rite, and the organic produce items are partly grouped together in one place and partly spread around without much of a rational scheme, which makes shopping for specific items rather problematic (check here; check there; check back here again, rinse, lather, repeat). They mostly seem to have crammed more volume of the same items on the shelves, without even the benefit of avoiding the constant bumpings of restockers.
The food court similar suffers from an attack of tha banals. Premade salads: yellow and white iceberg. Pizza kitchen: chewy cardboard reheat for $ 2.79 a slice. Deli sandwiches: take forever for $ 10. Sushi: sits around and tastes more like dead raw fish than it should. I could go on, but with the kids we have now tried literally every counter and I can’t say any of them struck me as any different from normal Price Chopper hot food lines, other than the fancy computer menus and new signage. (The hot burger line is new, and a modest exception, but for the same price I can get much better fare at Five Guys or even across the road at Red Robin.)
I would almost say «hey, at least it’s better than regular Price Chopper» but it’s not, because of the aforementioned traffic and flow problems, and of course the need to inhale, while eating your Bistro purchase, if you are lucky enough to find a table in the poorly-​designed seating area, Fish Stench.
It all feels in the end like the proverbial exercise of putting lipstick on a pig, which I suppose is better than no lipstick if you have to kiss a pig. But I like to think I have other, better options in the barnyard.

This review is for the subs specifically, but bear with me because I will get to other aspects of Market Bistro shortly.
It is a sin to eat a bad sub. That’s because it is doing terrible things to your body and if it’s not delicious and succulent, you’re adding inches to your waistline and taking years off your life for nothing. Unfortunately, the sub I ate at Market Bistro today was not good.
There were some hopeful elements. The buns were properly puffy and the lettuce was shredded. But the Italian included regular ham which should have caused me to flee like the wind. And not only was sharp provolone not available, but the server did not know what it was. The result was carelessly assembled with none of the careful latticework which characterizes a good sub and served with «Italian dressing» which was one of those sickly sweet artificially thickened abominations; oil and vinegar was available in a common area if I wanted to go and get it myself; oregano was not mentioned. On a scale where Roma is 5 and Subway is 3, this scores a low 3.
But I know there are great things to be had at Market Bistro. For one thing there’s Ben and Bill’s which is a real kosher deli. For another the smoked meats are spectacular. Unfortunately the sides offered with the smoked meats are starch bombs. The best meal here might be a half pound of brisket or ribs combined with a quarter pound each of cole slaw and potato salad from Ben and Bill’s.
Also, the salads! Right next to the sub station is the salad station and I could not keep my eyes off an enormous Cobb that was being mixed, I assumed it was to fill a cold bin but in fact it was one serving. That’s where I’m headed next time.
The Golub folks have said this is an experiment where they’ll find out what people like and what they don’t. You can help them learn and improve by eating ribs and salads and staying far, far away from the subs.

Wow, this Price Chopper has no less than 3 entries on Unilocal.Make up your mind people!
Anyway, my wife and I stopped here for lunch this past Saturday after hearing much hype about the place. My review is mainly for the food court and not so much the grocery store.
The food court is an interesting concept in a grocery store, and there are several ‘restaurants’ from which to choose. I opted to get a burger from the burger station. My wife got sushi (which was already packaged and she just grabbed it from the chiller).
My burger was cooked to order from fresh beef. It was decent. Not bad at all. But at $ 11 with fries (the frozen variety) it was too expensive in my opinion. I got sautéed onions and peppers on it. They were sitting in a steam table at the front of the station.
Many of the other stations also have steam tables with food sitting in them. I loathe steam tables. I want my food freshly prepared.
My wife’s sushi was ok, but nothing special, and the same as you’d get in any of the other PC’s sushi sections.
The grocery store does have some impressive features, such as the growler station and the very well stocked cheese section. Not to mention expanded gluten free, organic and international sections.
To sum up, the grocery store is nice but the food court left me unimpressed.

As a Western NY originator I am a die hard Wegman’s fan. Anyone who’s been there knows it’s more than a grocery store. This new Market Bistro Price Chopper is as close as we are going to get to a Wegman’s like experience. Not only is the actual grocery area roomy, clean, and well stocked but the «carry out» food section is very impressive. Nothing like what I think of when I think Price (Ghetto) Chopper.
I think because this store isn’t officially open because this feed hasn’t gotten a lot of reviews yet but I’m looking forward to this place really taking off and setting a bar for other grocery stores around the area.
I will be re-​reviewing this when it’s all finished because I plan on doing the bulk of my grocery shopping at this place.
Here’s a link with some photos included on what it’s looking like so far: