A chicken and artichoke pizza, in front, and a peach special salad at The Marketplace Café; in the background is the R.I. State House.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

PROVIDENCE — Name some restaurants with the best views in Rhode Island and you’ll probably come up with some that sit on the seashore.But from a landlubber’s perspective, there’s nothing that can beat the view outside the big windows of The Marketplace Café at Nordstrom’s department store in Providence Place where the State House seems to be practically within touching distance.

The specialty department store at Providence Place is renowned for its elegant clothes and even more elegant shoes. Just as elegant,, but less well known, is the nicely appointed casual restaurant in a corner of the store’s third floor whose extensive menu includes everything from light-lunch sandwiches and salad plates to a choice of three pizzas and such filling dinnertime fare as roasted vegetables with chicken or salmon and several pasta dishes.

All Nordstrom stores have restaurants, including one at the Pentagon City Mall in Arlington, Va., and the newest at the Burlington Mall off Route 128 outside Boston. But there are five different takes on menu items at the various stores. The one at Burlington, Mass., has light tapas-style items, for instance. And not all stores serve pizzas cooked in a brick oven, as does the one at Providence Place.

Certainly none can compare to the view from the Providence store which ranges, depending on which window one sits at, from the State House to College Hill to the new buildings rising around Waterplace Park to the 1928 Fleet Bank Building in Kennedy Plaza. At night the State House shimmers like a white wedding cake. By day it glows magnificently, looking certainly more stately than some of the things that go on under its marble dome.

The cafe itself is a lovely place with brown and beige walls, recessed tin ceiling panels from which hang delicate chandeliers with soft lighting. There are little squares of orange and gold stained glass in some of the upper panels of its windows as well as atop the divider that separates the dining room from the narrow corridor where you order and pay for your meal.

The Marketplace Café offers cafeteria style service. Pick up a tray at the entrance, look at the choices of food attractively arranged behind a long glass display case and place your order. You’ll be handed your soup or salad along the way. For items that require oven time, you’ll get a bold number which is placed into a metal rod that sits on your tray and alerts the server as he or she brings your order from the kitchen.

It’s all very efficient, and the pace is soothingly pleasant, with large comfy booths at the windows and a good number of tables in the center of the room. It’s a perfect place to unwind after a hectic day of shopping and a good place to meet before a movie. It’s certainly more sedate than the hubbub going on in the food court at the center of the mall. We’ve always been impressed by the quality of the food and the reasonable prices which, at the very highest, are still under $11 for entrees, except for the salmon with roasted vegetables, which goes for $11.25.

We’ve eaten here often, so even before we visited for this review I could recommend several items. The Chinese Chicken Salad ($9.25) is a big plate heaped with a variety of greens, slices of chicken, Asian veggies, crunchy wontons, sweet mandarin orange slices, toasted almonds and ginger sesame dressing, all topped with a pair of thin breadsticks that look like chopsticks. I also love the Rustic Vegetables ($8.75), a hearty serving of big slices of carrots, zucchini, yellow squash, red and yellow peppers and red bliss potatoes. For a little more money you can get it with a roast chicken breast or salmon.

The soups and pizzas, too, have always won rave reviews. We fondly recall the She-Crab soup, but this time it was a cup of the creamy Roma Tomato Basil ($3.50), also a winner on previous visits, and a cup of the soup du jour which this night was a very rich Chicken and Orzo ($3.95). It was so thick in a sweet tomato base that had shredded chicken, onion and carrot that if I had closed my eyes and didn’t know what it was, I would have sworn it was beef stew.

On previous visits, both the Margherita and Wild Mushroom and Sausage pizzas ($8.95 and $9.50 respectively) have always been excellent. But on this visit we entered new territory with the Grilled Chicken and Artichoke Pizza ($9.75). A crisp-crusted 12-inch pie, it was loaded with tender slices of chicken and tangy artichoke hearts with a sprinkling of baby spinach in a mild Parmesan cream sauce. Caramelized onions and the halved, marinated cherry tomatoes added sweetness, although the tomatoes had a tendency to roll off.

In the interests of variety, my dining companion passed up the Chinese Chicken Salad this time in favor of the day’s salad special ($9.95), a heady blend of flavors with chunks of tender chicken, bits of real bacon, slices of peaches, cherry tomatoes and sugar-coated walnuts on a bed of mixed greens, topped with a citrusy dressing. With its sweetness and crunch, after sampling a few bites I decided that next time this is on the menu I’d order it.

Several kinds of sandwiches and paninis are always available: smoked turkey, horseradish roast beef and chicken mozzarella among them with out-of-the-ordinary fixings, such as caramelized onion, cranberry chutney and Havarti cheese. The Honey Roasted Ham & Apple ($9.25) is a large multi-grain roll cut in two with slices of spiral ham, sharp cheddar, roasted apples and arugula, topped with a whole-grain mustard aioli. It was hearty and delicious, perfect to go if you’re in a hurry.

My Chicken Pasta Rossa ($10.25) had thin slices of grilled chicken, bacon, mushrooms and spinach over fusilli with a creamy tomato basil sauce that was a wonderful blend of country flavors.

Usually we don’t do desserts here, but this time … there were very big, marvelously chewy cookies ($1.95 each), including a chip-filled chocolate chip and a latte which we decide would be very good with coffee. There also was a rich, lattice-crusted raspberry torte ($4.95) that was a sweet end to a very good meal.BILL OF FARE

Dinner for two at The Marketplace Café might look something like this:

Iced Tea…$2.20

Root Beer…$2.20

Grilled Chicken & Artichoke Pizza…$9.75

Salad special…$9.95

Chicken Pasta Rossa…$10.25

Two cookies…$3.90

Total food and drink…$38.25

Tax…$3.06

Total bill…$41.31

The Marketplace Café in Nordstrom’s at Providence Place. (401) 621-3111. Casual. Handicapped accessible. Child seats. Children’s menu. AE, MC, V, DIS, Nordstrom. Mall parking starts at $1 for three hours. Open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mon. to Thurs.; 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Fri. and Sat.; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sun. Salads $8.95 to $10.50. Sandwiches $8.75 to $9.25. Entrees $8.25 to $11.25. Tea, coffee, soft drinks only.

mjanuson@projo.com