Archives Restaurant at the Marriott Lafayette Yard Hotel 1 West Lafayette Street,Trenton (609) 421-4000
(Directions)

Archives is the restaurant in the Marriott Hotel downtown. It’s your basic Marriott Hotel restaurant, executing upscale restaurant food competently. So why’s it in Hidden Trenton? Three reasons.

1. It’s one of only two places for an elegant business lunch downtown (the other being Settimo Cielo).
2. It stays open later than all but a handful of Trenton restaurants (closing at 10 PM).
3. It’s the ONLY place that I’m aware in town where you can get a decent Sunday brunch.

The brunch is the same outstanding breakfast buffet served during the week (same price, too: $14.95), but available until 2:30 PM on Sundays. There’s an omelette and waffle station where the chef will make yours to order. Plus scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, home fries, etc. on the buffet. The pastries are quite well done. Also, toast, oatmeal, fresh fruit (usually melons and pineapple). And fresh juices. Go hungry, and suspend your low carb or fat diet, and you’ll really enjoy it.

The restaurant space is quite nicely executed, with a mix of tables and comfortable booths, and attractive, original, Trenton-themed art on the wall. The wait staff seems to turn over fairly regularly, so service is sometimes an adventure.

At lunch, the salads are excellent. You can get a Caesar salad with grilled steak or chicken. These are grilled to order, so you actually can get rare steak. Also, the Cobb Salad is executed wonderfully. The hamburger is just OK – I think it’s changed since the readers of Trenton Downtowner voted it the best in Trenton. It’s an 8 ounce, machine-formed Angus Beef patty (not frozen, but the “standard Marriot hamburger patty” according to the chef, provided by a purveyor in north Jersey who supplies every Marriot in the state). It’s grilled to order, and is presented for some reason in a fish&chips basket, lined with coated paper printed to look like an English newspaper (I kid you not). The toppings are good quality (romaine lettuce, red onion, sour pickle), but the fries are standard frozen shoe strings (comparable to Burger Kings). A “standard” offering for $9-10 — you’ll eat it happily if you like burgers…but it’s not nearly the best in town.

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