I've been going here for about 7 years now so I've seen the evolution of this store. It was always a nice stop for my go to Kohinoor Basmati rice, samosas (when they don't run out and was told they usually arrive after 1230 p.m. daily) or their fresh vegetables which are located in the back of store. Current to date, Namaste is expanding. They acquired the next door building and said they are turning that into some frozen section area. Expansion of this store is coming along slowly, but surely. Shelves looked fully stocked today and the inside and outside look clean. Good amount of patrons on a muggy December, midday. There's always new faces at the register and today there are female cashiers who seem nice and approachable. I think this is the only Indian market placed in the heart of Belmont, so there's always heavy foot traffic in this shopping center. Come by when you need a fix of Samosas, biryani lunches and or your daily groceries, Namaste has a good variety. read more

I come here only for last minute stuff. Beware of expired food. Or close to expiry date stuff. The vegetables can be good, again YMMV. Customer service is horrible if it even exists. Even better, do yourself a favor and shop at India Grocery and Spice in San Mateo or India Cash and Carry in Foster City. read more

Hello, this is a post against an employee #9, taken from the recipe. She is a female, young, but not friendly, texting is most important to serve customers, her attitude made me feel like I am about to bother her. She looked at my cart, then said put them there pointing at table top next to the cash register, and turn her back and start looking at her phone. I did put my stuff and then she started scanning them. I paid, and left outside, I started to check the receipt, there is a KOLHARABI for $3.99, I thought that is the name for Turnip, it was very high, so I searched the name and it was something else. Anyway I went in and she was not pleasant, no smile, no sorrow, to make the story short, I got a refund, from $3.99 to $1.99. Employees like is are not good for business nor good to have contact with customers, first time I saw her and did not like. Teach her manners please. read more

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Expired food, dirty floors, disorganized shelves. I had high hopes but both times I've visited, 3 months apart, I see no change. If Namaste Plaza deep cleaned the shop, organized its inventory, and put more attention into its quality and display, it would really make all the difference. The customer clientele is here, but this store's standards are not up to par. read more

It's a regular Indian grocery store. I was able to find general ingredients and food items. Parking is right in front of the store so it was easy. Store was clean. The restroom was dirty and should be worked on. read more

Staff are friendly and place has good, clean product. They have prepped meals that are very good

They are in a ideal location with no other Indian grocery nearby BUT this store is OVERDUE for an upgrade in their layout. Went there recently a couple of times, both times I left with the feeling that they can do so much better in how their store is organized. A few suggestions if the management is listening 1. Move your fresh produce section to the front of the store where it can see daylight through the windows and look alive. 2. Promptly remove aging produce from the fresh produce area. 3. Light the back of your store better 4. Remove the trash containers for produce gone bad from there. Customers don't need to see it. 5. The next door section where you have expanded into I didn't dare enter as I saw a bunch of fat flies hovering there. Why? Are you keeping the meat section cool enough? 6. The checkout section is so large, for what purpose? Use that space to bring your fresh produce to the front. Visit India Cash & Carry store in Foster City for ideas on what a good store layout is. I love going to that store. The only reason I come to your store is that is nearby, I can walk here is 25 mins for a nice workout. 7. Train your checkout employees to greet your customers and be more customer-friendly. 8. Play light Indian music to get a nice vibe and ambience going. I'll keep an eye on newer reviews in case these suggestions are implemented. I really would like the convenience of the location. For the love of your customers, just make your store right. read more

When this market opened I was excited that I didn't have to travel far.But i got disappointed after one year as they don't put any prices on their product and when we inquire about it they go to cashier and stay in line for their turn toget it scanned and tell me the price,so for every item they do the same action finally I got tired and then I reshelved the grocery in their respective shelves .They think that the customer will not be concerned about the price of any product so why to worry about it.They don't know that this is a recipe for down fall as myself go over there If I am in hurry and cant travel far to get grocery produce at reasonable prices from Pioneer cash and carry in Artesia. that is the reason I see fewer customers than before as their employees are not consientious and thsy keep gossiping inside warehouse. Since the boss is not concerned about customer service so they think every thing is ok read more

The place has gone down in every category: The variety of Indian brands, quality and - most important - service. The music blares. The employees sit on their phones. Usually they don't know where anything is. And no one leaves their seat if you ask for something and they don't know the location. All in all, time to find another place; luckily there are choices now. read more

Never open on time. Tried coming several times, they don't open the shop until the feel like it. Please update time.

New management, great improvements! Updating from 9/17/23 review - this store has changed management and they have immediately made thoughtful improvements across the board. New options for fresh food, consistently stocked. Free Chai! Staff and owner are available, listening for suggestions, and they really care. First big change we saw was that the store was cleaner inside and outside. The only miss is the newly increased rates (esp. refrigerated shelves). But, overall, great to see this place improve. read more

We'll organized store. Fresh vegetables in the back. Great selection of fresh dairy items

Pros: It has everything an Indian grocery store should have. Hot Samosas & other snacks available. Lots of variety. Ample parking available because it's located in a shopping center. Cons: Shelves contain items past their expiry date. Fruits & Veggies are not really fresh. Rotten produce is a common sight here. Double check prices on items and on receipt. read more

First time shopper and I wish I came on Yelp before I made the visit. The employees are not helpful or friendly. I asked one if he could rec some popular Indian spices. Kind of just laughed at me and told me that he "doesn't cook so he wouldn't know." Whether you eat Indian food or not, it's basic business to know the product that you are selling. Also, check the expiration dates. This pic was taken on the 23rd of December, 2022. Gross. Someone correct me if I'm reading this wrong but it does say 2021, right? read more

Namaste Plaza - 2021? - Imported Food Near Me - Belmont, California

Samosas are delicious and $1! Cashier was very friendly. Great place to grab a quick snack.

I have been going to this store for last 10 years. Not comparable to the Indian stores in the South Bay but a good place to shop if you live in North Bay and don't want to travel far South. Don't forget to get the freshly made Samosas while you are shopping there. read more

Can the store please organize its shelves better? Why are groceries strewn on the floor? Not once but every time i have been there in the last 6 months. I am not commenting on price or availability, I found everything i was looking for. But its so messy...There are two other stores nearby i generally go to. read more

Echoing on some of the reviews here. Abysmal customer service and it is very clear the people at the store have a don't-care attitude , which the owner doesn't seem to mind. There are so many reviews here for the past 1-1.5 years about customer service and nothing seems to have changed. Especially the lady who works Saturday afternoon shifts. There is less and less variety than pre-pandemic. There were couple of items that I went looking for from name-brand which were missing in the aisle and also lack of Janmashtami sweets & snacks. When I asked them at the counter on whether they will stock them later, they were at first clueless on what I asked for, so showed them a photo from Google but the lady couldn't bother to look and gave the standard "what we have in aisle is what we have". Other stores atleast make an attempt to take requests and if there is enough demand they will stock them next time. Some even go out of the way to point you to other Indian stores or even order them a week or two later. The lady literally couldn't care. The other man at the counter helped bag the items in two of the bags and had to attend to other customers. But the lady couldn't even bring herself to bag the third one. She couldn't remember that I brought my own bags and kept asking over & over if I need a bag. On top of it when there are no customer in the line and are browsing she keeps herself engaged in her phone. If you ask her a question on where to find stuff, she gives extremely irritated look that she is busy with her phone and you are interrupting her. Take your business elsewhere! read more

Selling expired material at a discount. Complaint lodged with food authority. No ethics or integrity

This place has been here forever, since we lived in Belmont up the street 6 years ago and probably way before that. It's been here so long the name is practically faded off the sign (and nobody's bothered to paint it) and that's probably illustrative of the upkeep on this place. It's the most convenient place for us being right on ECR and off the highway exit for Ralston so we still come back. Mixed feelings overall on items to get here though. Pros: Lots of Indian goodies of essentially every sort Also has this garage-esque area to the right of the store itself that has random housewares Some produce but it's not the freshest (allllll the way in the back) Out-of-bag ready curries and rice dishes that just need microwaving, along with more involved spice kits for adding to your own ingredients. We've often enjoyed the Butter Chicken kits, jeera rice, korma chicken powder. Tons of Indian snacks, cookies, dessert items, and refrigerated dessert items. Indian ramen packets (i.e. good ol' Maggi noodles from late nights in college!) They do take credit card. Cons: Kind of grimy and musty smelling... not cleaned up much Kind of disorganized and random... things you found once are probably not reliably there again (but you'll find a similar replacement). For example, I feel like snack / dessert items are in like 4 random places in the store. It took me over 10 minutes to find Soan Papdi (one of my favorite things to get here) since I was clearly looking in all the wrong places. It's great if you're into browsing for the heck of it, not great if you're in a hurry. In the past, I've gotten rice here that had weevils (rice bugs) (had to thoroughly rinse every time I cooked the rice from that bag), but packaged spices, ready meals and snacks seem to be fine. Parking is cramped and shared with a bunch of other businesses, including a Walgreens. read more

Been going here for a decade now.. and this year they changed ownership: and the new management is much better. (a) Friendly (b) Helpful (c) well organized... read more

Went here recently for Faloodah ingredients and got everything I needed! Asked for help finding the ingredients and the guys there were super helpful. Got some sugar cane juice and it was fantastic! read more

I have been going to this store regularly this year 2020 and I am very concerned that the owner of this shop is making no efforts whatsoever to keep the store safe. 1. No hand sanitizers for customer use. 2. Carts are not sanitized. 3. Door handles of the freezer doors not sanitized. 4. Store is generally disorganized. 5. All employees typically are rude and not interested in appreciating you as a customer. Ask them a question about a product and usually it a monosyllable or a head gesture. Belmont Covid-19 enforcement MUST visit this shop and make a ruling. read more

It's so sad to see how far this place has declined. This used to be our go to place for Indian staples. But now the staff is rude and unfriendly, the produce isn't as fresh, and the place has a musty, unhygienic smell to it. They've recently added a requirement that you spend $50 on other groceries if you want to buy basmati rice, due to the Indian ban on non basmati rice. Yeah that makes no sense - basmati rice isn't banned, so there's no shortage, yet they're making their customers buy $50 of other groceries for the opportunity to buy basmati rice. read more

This place has a lot of items! I came here with a friend and we got so many items. I got frozen items, veggies, snacks. I didn't feel like anything was too expensive at all. Of course, make sure to check all the expiration dates! Overall a convenient place to get groceries. It's a little messy right now since they are expanding. The staff was very friendly! During checkout, the cashier was very courteous and let me know that one of the packages had a hole and I should get another one. Will definitely come back! read more

10 months of desperately searching for Creamed Coconut finally ended at Namaste Plaza and for that reason alone it's worthy of 5 stars! But it got even better as I also found my husbands much loved Madras Curry paste as well. Excellent! I went in asking the staff if they had any of the elusive creamed Coconut to be greeted with confused looks and told that they didn't have it only I then found it tucked away in the flour isle. Maybe they didn't understand my accent.. The store is pretty big with a wide variety of everything you'll need to made Indian food at home - Spices, Prepacked sauces, Breads (various flavour Naan, Chapati ect), Flour, Rice, Lentils, Flavourings, Sweet & Biscuits, Fresh produce, DVD'S. I even found British custard powder and Digestive biscuits among their huge selection and the store is kept nice and clean too. Definitely going to be returning as they stock pretty much everything I need for cooking great Indian Curry at home. read more

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I went to this store to purchase groceries, a person at the register named Akhil was very rude. I just asked him could you help me find the dosa batter and he told I cannot help you to show you where it is, and he told me it's in refrigerator. Then I went to bill the groceries and I paid with cash and told he cannot print receipt then I asked him to call his manager and I asked his name. Then all of the sudden the miracle happened he has receipt for my groceries purchased. I will better go to other grocery store rather than having bad customer service. read more

This is the most revolting, unhygienic grocery store you will ever find in the bay area. Today, I saw two pigeons in the store, pecking at and eating from on bags of grain on the floor. The clerk thought it was no big deal. This is revolting. read more

Namaste Plaza - Pigeons walking through the store - Imported Food Near Me - Belmont, California

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This store is dirty and disorganized. Initially they used to tell me that when they rent the store next door, they would have more space and they would clean up the store, renovate and arrange the shelves. Instead now they have two dirty horrible looking spaces. I think this store should be reported to the health department. It's dirty and unsafe. Even when they have so much space, they still keep on leaving stuff in the aisle and outside. This one store makes the entire strip mall look cheap, horrible and dirty. The owner of the strip mall must kick these guys out for not maintaining the place. What right do they have to throw empty boxes outside their store and bring down the entire neighborhood ? Please give these guys an ultimatum to either maintain their store or get out. read more

I have never seen a store this bad. Most of the stuff I bought from the frozen section mind you, had mold once I opened it. The store had little to no inventory. I'm never going there again read more

Used to be the only store selling Indian groceries in the area (Belmont/San Mateo), which seems to have gone to their head. The store is getting worse by the day in several ways. The shelves are a mess, with disorganized product packages. Items that should be in the freezer are often lying outside on the floor while workers (who should be putting the stuff inside the freezer) shoot the breeze nearby. Products that fall off the upper freezer shelves can be seen lying on the floor at the bottom of the freezer, sometimes in a puddle of condensed water or some other unknown liquid. Products commonly available elsewhere are not in stock for months (which is why we went to check out another store last week, another Indian grocery on Hillsdale blvd. ). Now onwards, we will take our business there. Namaste Plaza is clearly going south, and really needs to get their act together. read more

People working here are all illegals without any paper work and show attitude to customers. Not helping but always on phone

Terrible service, checkout clerks think it beneath themselves to bag groceries. Untrustworthy as Prices on items say $3.99 and it's rings up as $4.49 - as the clerks and they say this was part of a sale. Then they offer to give a discount. Prices have gone up significantly so the convenience factor is way overridden by the negatives. I am going to drive a few miles to Hillsdale or Foster City, but I'm not going here anymore read more

Expensive compared to South Bay Indian groceries. Each item is at least $2 overpriced. I buy here only for urgent need otherwise I go to South Bay during weekends. Their Kesar pista ice cream is delicious. read more

They have everything you need for Indian delicacies! Has helped us to not feel home sick! Whenever unhappy get the ingredients and try your grandmas recipes... read more

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Dirty store, spoiled food, lazy cashier lady. Worst Indian store I've been to. Just go to any other Indian store.

I'm confused about the other reviews here, complaining about customer service. We've been here many times and every single time, the guys are awesome: super responsive and curious, interested, not passing the buck, answering out questions, and even just shooting the shit, if we feel like it, lol :-) On our last visit a couple of days ago, we inquired about their samosas, which we get for my mother in law. And the guy at the counter told us, very apologetically, that they no longer carry them because they don't sell well. Agghhh! And he was so sweet about it, as if it was his personal decision to not sell them, which it wasn't. This is an awesome shop, not small in scale, but also not so overwhelming as many of the stores in Fremont or Sunnyvale. It's compact enough that you can find pretty much anything you'd want, e.g. I'd always wanted to try their Patak's Medium hot lime pickle (and a while back, I'd bought the brinjal, which is a childhood favorite). They have all manners of eggplant, usually the American, Japanese as well as the mini Indian ones, which I usually hone in on. Every single time of dal or lentil you'd want they have, plus rice of all varieties in bulk amounts. All the Haldiram stuff, which i can't digest but there's my 90 year old mother in law who goes to town with it, lol :-) Some of those ghatias as like crack, I swear, it's so good, I could live on it, and nothing else. They have all sorts of hard to find flavors of kulfi and ice-creams, which my husband makes a bee line for. For both Indians and non Indians alike, this is a phenomenal shop that imports a ton of stuff, everything you'd need and more. Plus they have an extensive selection of frozen meals and desserts, plus snacks, such as doklas, which are not bad, were it not for the fact that I can't help but compare it to my Mom's. Everything about this place is bomb, including the free parking in front. read more

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It's a store of contrast- it will make you happy since you will find most of the stuff you need but it will also leave you terribly unhappy with the whole shopping experience. It has everything that an Indian grocery store should offer but the store is not clean, items are not well arranged and shelves are shabby. If they can just give few touches then it will be a good grocery store. But until then continue with the unpleasant experience since there isn't another Indian grocery store in the near vicinity. read more

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Sometimes I come here and question if there was a recent earthquake that I somehow didn't feel. It's always a GD mess, to put it lightly. Like, the mess happening in the aisles here is visible from even the outer parking lot aisles. I don't know why they feel like during prime shopping hours is always, everyday, the best time to dump boxes and bags on the ground and re-org the somehow always apocalyptic shelves, but that's the method they're going with here. I come here for microwaveable rice, salty canned pickled veggie paste, and 5-lb packs of paneer that I'll eat entirely in that same day because I'm a disgusting human being but I'm at point where I'm just comfortable with it so it's cool. Not everything has prices labeled so it can be hard to know how much stuff is and if you care enough, it's not a bad idea to check the container labels because a lot of times things are for sale well beyond the 'sell by' date. There's also produce in the back but I haven't really ever given much time to checking out the quality or pricing, but if you're into that kind of stuff it might be worth a look see. A lot of times there's a line because it's apparently commonplace to bargain on the prices and question the freshness of every single product you're buying. The guys behind the counter are pretty patient with that stuff, but when you get to the front with no questions and just say 'Hi, how are you?', don't be surprised if they look right at you and don't answer back. I don't know what the deal with that is, but I guess it wouldn't kill me to have one less conversation during the day so it's fine. Long live bulk packages of paneer. read more

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The store was never good with its upkeep or service. It is now plumbing the depths of horrible and rude customer service. The cashiers are still (Feb 2022) refusing to bag the items, citing the practice they started during the pandemic. Initially, I thought they were slow in abandoning some of their covid protocols. But now, when asked if they are following pandemic rules, they simply say they don't need anyone's rules to decide whether they bag the items or not! Take your business elsewhere. There are many new Indian grocery stores within 2 miles of Belmont. read more