Gladstone Tavern

Pretty much all around great place. You can tell that because the men’s room is always clean. The waiter station is right outside of that and that is pretty tight too. Menu changes pretty regularly, I am not sure about corn week but whatever. The drink specials and beer options also get switched up pretty regularly, a sign things don’t get stale or boring. Bar menu has a burger and a chicken sandwich or you can get a steak or filet. I prefer a rib eye but I always seem to miss it. I had some good ribs not to long ago though. The short bartender with the great hair, she loves to make the drink you want, no problem. Other places you get the eye roll. Sure, every place has its ups and downs but these guys seem to make it all come together.

It’s rare to find a quality restaurant such as the Gladstone Tavern in this area.
The menu changes every season, but some of my favorites have been the Pork Chop, ½ Chicken, and the Hanger Steak. You can’t go wrong with any of their salads, and the hummus and guacamole are excellent.
In my opinion, they have the best burger in the state. The meat is consistently juicy, the bun sturdy, and the toppings bring it all together. I’ve also never had a better french fry. They’re not too thick, not too thin, and perfectly crispy.
The cocktail menu is fantastic. The Pineapple Haze is a seasonal drink, but when it’s on the menu, I refuse to order anything else. They also have an excellent beer selection and wine list.
I love ice cream, and the ice cream they have is made in-​house and delicious.
Every menu detail is well thought out, and it shows. The quality of service, food, and drink is top notch.

I LOVE this place! The food is ALWAYS great and the menu is ALWAYS changing (corn week is a personal favorite), the staff is friendly and attentive. My (non cooking) brother-​in-​law lives by the GT, so for many-​many years, this has been our go to place to meet up for lunch, dinner or to celebrate a birthday. The price is on par for other comparable places. They have a bar menu that has a great pizza and home made buffalo chicken bites as well. I wished I lived closer– I would stop cooking and call this home.

The food is OK but the service is very inconsistent. This restaurant remains very busy because there are not a lot of options in town. If you can’t be seated in the main dining room, don’t bother to sit upstairs, you can be guaranteed 2^nd rate service there

We have gone to the tavern many times for lunch, and once for dinner before the new owners took over. This past Saturday we went for dinner. A very pleasant surprise, we were seated immediately, service was great, the oysters were delish, and the iron skillet chicken was without a doubt the Best chicken dish I ever had. We will be back more often.
Peter D

I was lucky enough toget a table for lunch yesterday, during this holiday season. Glad I did. The menu, while not huge had so many interesting dishes that it was hard to choose. Everyone enjoyed their selections. Don’t pass up dessert! I was trying to be good, ordering a kale and duck salad for my meal, but then I Had to have the figgy pudding with pecan crumble and clove ice cream. It was impossible to pass up– If for no other reason than to say I finally had figgy pudding! Delicious.

I had lunch here recently and, honestly, it has so much great ambiance sitting by the fireplace. You feel cozy right from the start. The menu is okay but, like other commenters, I agree it could be a little more interesting. My friend had the fish tacos and I had a club sandwich. Everything was great and our service was on point.

I stopped here for drinks and appetizers at the bar. Drinks were good and Mitchell was a good bar tender. Place is just loud and cramped, so it is not a relaxing bar atmosphere. I would have given an additional star if I had not witnessed the bar maid wipe her nose with her hand and then grab olives and put them in a martini without washing her hands first. Well, I guess maybe she thought the alcohol would kill the germs?

I been here several times as I work in the area. The food is very good, from the burgers to the swordfish. The portions are perfect and the fries are delicious here. They have a great beer list and they do special drinks as well. It is over priced though and sometimes they go a little bit overboard on their dishes trying to be more hipster but overall a good place for being in Gladstone. Sometimes they do events with bands playing and special food events. They also have a nice outdoor area with a bar.

Great service from server Luke, don’t know his last name but he was incredible. Quick with the water refills, very respectful, and all around great guy. Some guy named Tom was being very rude though, don’t think he fits in to the Gladstone family environment. Dine on fellow Unilocalers.

I love the food! Swordfish tonight!
Service was excellent!
The cocktail was so original and perfect!

Delicious as always. Gladstone Tavern continues to deliver. Their dishes are always new/​seasonal, beautifully presented and most importantly delicious.
Oysters are a must because the accoutrement (with pickles in it) is absolutely amazing. Tonight we had the oysters (as usual) and they didn’t disappoint. We paired our meal with their peach cocktail which was to die for — and a perfect drink to close out the summer season. I had the lamb for my main course and my friend had the swordfish. WOW. It was spectacular. The mint chimichurri on the lamb was exactly what lamb needs. I don’t even know what to say about the potato croquette that accompanied it — a perfect mix.
I had a taste of my friend’s swordfish with glass noodles and it had excellent flavor and is definitely a dish I hope they have again so I can have it as my main dish.
We both finished with the banana ice cream sandwiches for dessert. The perfect end to a great meal!

It used to be so good. The menu now is uninteresting at best and is overpriced for being so uninspiring. You get this in a tourist place. I think they’re trying to do the farm to table model, but they’re missing the basics of being a good dining experience by a mile.
The cold mashed potatoes in my meal at least sat next to warm greens with a cool salmon so the food temperature I guess averaged out. :) At least my children liked the shoestring fries of which I stole a few. :)
The unsweetened iced tea was good.
There are many better places to enjoy in the area. I have lived in the area for over a dozen years, just for point of reference, and eat out often. Maybe the competition and a wake up call will cause this place to get back into shape and be enjoyable as it once was.
The service people are very nice and attentive so there’s a positive. Although, a common complaint I have with a lot of places: do not start taking away dishes until everyone is finished eating.
Update (September 4^th, 2015): Tom, thank you for the polished reply. Someone did a beautiful job crafting it for you. I did not post of any the nasty messages you sent me privately in response to my review which are quite different than your public reply here. :) But that is fine as this proves the value of social media p.r. firms. :) And what you wrote is a beautiful advertisement, but not much more which is pretty transparent to those who read reviews.
I honestly do you wish you the best. It would be wonderful to see an exciting menu that is priced right for which delicious meals can be served and quality memories can be created. You have a lovely building to work in, there is a lot of talent in the area and I am sure that you can really make your restaurant a place that would be wonderful to frequent which sadly is not the case now.
Do well, sir. Best of luck and success to you and your team. It would be wonderful to have reason to write a glowing review. Honestly, wishes for nothing but the best.

Frustrating experience. Place is lovely and food was excellent. But service was terrible, We were seated in the back terrace for Sunday lunch. Maybe that was the problem. An unfriendly waitress took our order. Two of us got our non alcoholic drinks but we waited and waited for a beer. After 10 minutes the waitress returned and said «the beer will be right up.» Ten more minutes later she and the beer showed up. One more thing. Please bus and clear tables when diners leave. This is a pet peeve of mine, It makes you feel like you’re an afterthought and that you’ve come late to the party. Great food and ambiance isn’t enough — bad service ruins the experience.

I love this place. The last few times I have gotten the chicken shnitzel and it was delish. They also have the best fries I have ever eaten. I love their adorable outdoor patio in the spring/​summer. We would go more often, but the children’s menu is quite a bit more expensive than other restaurants. $ 9 for buttered noodles and that is one of their cheaper selections. My husband and I love it, but don’t typically want to drop $ 18 for the two kiddos.
***UPDATE — We dined at Gladstone Tavern yesterday for Mother’s Day and were so incredibly disappointed. When we arrived for our lunch reservation, we waited patiently at the hostess stand and when the hostess arrived, she «greeted» us with a «are you being helped yet?». She seemed annoyed and was not welcoming at all. No, «Hi, how are you» or «Happy Mother’s Day». I get it, everyone has a bad day, I didn’t blame her and I hardly considered it a harbinger of things to come. Our party of 5 was then led outside to a table set for 4. They had to drag over another metal chair and stick it on the end of the table to accommodate us (even though we had a reservation for 5) and the table was truly only large enough for 4. There were several larger tables free and when we inquired as to whether they could seat us at at a more appropriate table, they told us that they could not accommodate us as they were booked for the day. The table was such a tight squeeze that our plates were on top of one another and there was barely enough room for our drinks. We were so packed in there that I couldn’t even get up to go to the ladies room without the entire table having to get up to let me out. I ended up not going! To add insult to injury, the larger empty tables remained open the entire time we were there! When the two person table next to us opened up, we asked if we could scoot the table over to make more room and they again told us that they were booked solid and couldn’t accommodate us. That table also sat open for the rest of the time were were there while we ate sat elbow to elbow with our plates and empty drink glasses piling up on top of one another. When you are spending $ 75 per person for lunch (they only offered the «dinner menu» aka «dinner prices» since it was Mother’s Day), you don’t want to sit on top of one another, with poor service, on a rickety metal table that shakes every time you try to cut your steak.
Also, it would have been nice to at least have a table cloth when paying dinner prices. Oddly enough, one table outside did have a table cloth while the rest of the tables were bare perforated metal? Was Chris Christy coming? He never showed.
Sadly, I don’t think we will be returning based on this experience. We feel completely ripped off and we don’t feel like anyone cared about making our dining experience special.

Came in for late lunch and REALLY had to get a train back to Hoboken soon, but I am forgiving and won’t take off a star for them taking SO long with a simple hamburger (which was all I really wanted since they were not serving their dinner menu yet. I had a full twelve minutes to eat the burger and get the train, but I give four stars because even in that short amount of time, I was privy to friendly and courteous service and a warm and elegant ambiance. It was pretty pricey for a hamburger and fries (which were actually very finely and thinly peeled/​stripped potatoes rather than fries as we know them to look), but this is generally an expensive and somewhat WASP-​y area from what I gathered, and this is literally all that is around the Gladstone train station, except a deli and a few other things.

Convenience can not be over stated — I can walk to this restaurant, and yet I don’t very often. The food is tasty but I’m wondering if there is a shortage of lettuce in the kitchen? How can our salads have such sparse allocations of lettuce?
I generally like this place but I would like to have some lettuce in my salad.

Exceptional service in the dining room at lunch today from Gigi (thank you!) plus good food & good beer so that made me a fan and motivated a rvw update. Vanilla porter was out danigit but a pint of Troeg’s Nugget Nectar was a very tasty amber ale, $ 7.50. We ordered a special short-​rib sandwich and a shrimp-​avocado wrap, both came with a tall bucket of fries for about $ 13 each. Nothing gourmet or innovative but well executed and tasty (altho fries shoulda been a bit hotter). Then we split a peanut-​butter disaster of a dessert — excellent brittle and cookie, the jar o’ cake & ice cream was over the top. So lunch for two was $ 60 with tip, that’s a tick high but Gigi let us take our time catching up, easy conversation in the bright, quiet room.
Vegetarian rating: unchanged at 2 stars.

Another place I went to with the finance department for dinner. There was about 20 of us.
When we arrived we received homemade guacamole in an avocado shell with warm tortillas. We had a set menu to choose from. The restaurant was very accommodating for those of us that needed Lenten type dinners.
For an appetizer I had the thai chili calamari. It was prepared perfectly. It had a nice crisp and wasn’t soggy. The thai chili sauce was delicious and the chopped mango was a nice bonus for extra flavor.
For my dinner out of the selections, I had the wild mushroom parpadelle in roasted garlic broth. I LOVE parpadelle. It was good. There really wasn’t a wow factor and I wasn’t blown away but I enjoyed it. I felt like the wild mushrooms overpowered everything in the plate. I wasn’t offered parmesan cheese which I would have liked.
I chose the toasted coconut ice cream for dessert. That was AMAZING!
I’d be willing to eat there again maybe in the summer. It depends on if I want to take the drive down. I’m 45 minutes north of there. It would be cute to try if they have an outside set up.
Staff was very nice and friendly and we always had drinks.

The crab tots were great, but I wished there were more. The Duck Quesadilla and the Mexican Shrimp wrap were excellent. The Shrimp wrap needs to have the shrimp chopped up. A whole shrimp is tough to bite and if it falls out of the wrap, you have nothing left. Loved the fries (Shoestring).
The wait staff was very attentive, even though we had my nephew there, she took care of him too.
The prices are a bit high, especially for the amount of food you get, but I guess it’s Gladstone. I would come back.