A stone oven shipped from Istanbul is firing fresh bread inside a New Jersey shopping mall. That alone should tell you Marmara Mediterranean Cuisine is not treating dinner like another quick food-court stop.
Tucked onto the lower level of Freehold Raceway Mall at 3710 Route 9, the restaurant took over a former Ruby Tuesday space and transformed it into a sprawling dining room built around Turkish and Mediterranean food.
The menu moves from smoky eggplant dips and crisp salads to pide, kebabs, lamb chops, seafood, and syrup-soaked desserts, with plenty of dishes designed to land in the middle of the table.
Marmara opened in 2023 as the project of Manalapan resident Bill Ayaz, whose Turkish background helped shape the concept. For Freehold diners, the result is an unexpected detour from the usual mall routine — one where a shopping trip can end with hot bread, grilled lamb, and a properly strong Turkish coffee.
A Taste of the Mediterranean Arrives in Freehold
The first surprise is simply the scale of the place. Marmara occupies roughly 5,800 square feet and was originally designed with seating for about 210 guests, making it considerably more ambitious than the grab-and-go restaurants most shoppers associate with a mall.
It sits on Level 1 at Freehold Raceway Mall, near the Carousel Entrance and opposite Old Navy, with its own exterior access as well. The location is useful to know because the restaurant feels slightly removed from the mall’s faster dining options upstairs.
You are not carrying a tray around looking for an empty table. This is a full-service restaurant with reservations, table service, large platters, and a menu that encourages people to settle in.
The idea dates to September 2023, when Marmara opened in the space previously occupied by Ruby Tuesday. Owner Bill Ayaz already had business ties to Freehold Raceway Mall, but this project was more personal.
Ayaz, a Manalapan resident who came to New Jersey at age 20, described the restaurant as a return to his Turkish roots. Even the name points east.
The Marmara region covers northwestern Turkey and includes Istanbul, the city that straddles Europe and Asia and has spent centuries absorbing influences from both sides. That makes the restaurant’s wide-ranging menu feel less random than it might at first glance.
Turkish staples lead the way, but neighboring Mediterranean traditions show up through grilled seafood, vegetable-heavy appetizers, salads, yogurt sauces, and plenty of olive oil.
The restaurant currently serves lunch and dinner seven days a week, with its own website listing opening at 11:30 a.m. daily and later closing times on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Turkish Roots Shape the Heart of Marmara’s Menu
Bill Ayaz did not settle for buying an ordinary commercial oven and calling the menu Turkish-inspired. Before Marmara opened, he traveled to Istanbul and brought back a traditional stone oven, along with Turkish silverware and other restaurant pieces.
That oven matters because some of the menu’s most interesting dishes depend on serious heat and fresh dough. Pide, sometimes casually described as Turkish pizza, is a boat-shaped flatbread that can be filled with cheese, meat, or vegetables.
Lahmacun takes another route, using a thinner base topped with seasoned minced meat and vegetables. Both make more sense when you think of Turkish bread as part of the meal rather than something brought out merely to keep the table busy.
The kitchen’s Turkish identity shows up just as clearly in dishes such as manti, small meat-filled dumplings served with garlicky yogurt, and Hünkar Beğendi, which pairs lamb with a creamy roasted eggplant base.
Then there is Ali Nazik kebab, another combination of grilled meat, eggplant, and yogurt that turns three familiar ingredients into something far richer than a standard meat-and-rice plate.
Marmara’s menu also makes room for regional salads such as Gavurdağı, built with chopped tomatoes, peppers, onions, parsley, walnuts, pomegranate, and olive oil. Executive Chef Metin Calisir, who led a team of cooks from Istanbul when the restaurant opened, helped establish that Turkish foundation from the start.
His early menu included dishes such as chitir kebab — meat wrapped in lavash with grilled eggplant and garlic yogurt — alongside more modern creations. The result is a menu rooted in tradition without behaving like a museum exhibit.
Regional Flavors Come Together on One Table
The easiest way to understand Marmara is to stop thinking about entrées for a minute. Start with the middle of the table.
Cold appetizers run through hummus, baba ghanoush, labneh, spicy ezme, eggplant salad, and muhammara, each hitting a different combination of smoke, acidity, nuts, dairy, herbs, and olive oil.
The mixed appetizer platter is currently listed at $34.50 for online ordering, making it one of the simplest ways for a group to sample several flavors without turning dinner into a negotiation over six separate plates.
There is a rhythm to eating this way. Tear off some warm bread, drag it through smoky eggplant, switch to a brighter tomato-based spread, then reach for something grilled before circling back.
It is less about everyone guarding an individual plate and more about the table gradually becoming crowded. Salads fit naturally into that setup.
The Shepherd’s Salad combines tomatoes, cucumber, onion, parsley, seasoning, and olive oil, while Gavurdağı adds walnuts and pomegranate for extra texture and sweetness. Hot appetizers widen the range with falafel, fried calf liver, cheese-filled pastry rolls, and hummus topped with buttery pastrami.
From there, the menu stretches well beyond Turkey without losing its center. Seafood includes branzino, salmon kebabs, grilled shrimp, and octopus, while vegetarian diners can build a meal around spreads, salads, breads, and vegetable dishes rather than settling for a token meatless pasta.
Marmara itself describes the menu as Mediterranean and Turkish, with Greek specialties, Middle Eastern dishes, grilled meats, seafood, and vegetarian options included in the mix. It is a broad definition of Mediterranean cooking, but one that works best when several dishes arrive together.
Kebabs Fresh Bread and Meze Take Center Stage
You can smell what the grill is doing before you have decided what to order. Lamb, chicken, beef, peppers, and onions make up a big chunk of the menu, and Marmara does not restrict the kebab category to one familiar skewer.
Lamb Adana uses ground lamb seasoned with red pepper and paprika, while chicken Adana gives the same treatment to chopped chicken with garlic and spices. Lamb shish goes simpler with marinated chunks of meat cooked over high heat, and the mixed grill piles several styles onto one plate.
Current online pricing puts chicken Adana at $28.75, lamb Adana at $30.95, lamb shish at $33.95, and the mixed grill at $42.95, though restaurant pricing can change. The mixed grill is the useful order for anyone who has stared at a kebab menu for five minutes and decided choosing is overrated.
It combines different cuts and preparations so you get the contrast between juicy ground-meat kebabs, charred cubes of meat, gyro, and lamb chops. Bread is just as important.
Marmara’s custom stone oven was brought from Istanbul specifically for the restaurant, and fresh-baked breads and Turkish pies were part of the concept from opening day. That bread is what turns a lineup of meze into a meal.
Baba ghanoush brings smoke, hummus brings creamy sesame richness, spicy ezme gives tomatoes and peppers some heat, and labneh cools everything back down. Then the grill arrives and changes the pace completely.
For something heavier, the menu also includes oven-baked lamb shank, short ribs, musakka, İskender-style gyro over bread with tomato sauce and yogurt, and Beyti gyro wrapped in lavash. Nobody is leaving because the table ran out of options.
Traditional Desserts Bring the Meal to a Sweet Finish
There is a moment after a table full of grilled meat when ordering dessert sounds completely unreasonable. Then someone says kunefe.
That usually changes things. Marmara’s dessert menu goes well beyond the expected square of baklava, although baklava is absolutely there.
Kunefe is the dramatic choice: shredded pastry is cooked until crisp around a warm cheese center, then finished with syrup for a combination that is crunchy, stretchy, sweet, and unapologetically rich.
It is currently one of the restaurant’s most frequently ordered items online and is listed around the low-$20 range depending on the ordering platform.
Katmer offers another distinctly Turkish finish, layering thin flaky dough with pistachios, sugar, and kaymak, the thick clotted cream commonly paired with Turkish sweets.
Kadayif sticks with shredded filo pastry and syrup, while kazandibi — sometimes called brown-top pudding — is a caramelized milk pudding with a completely different, softer texture.
There are familiar choices too, including crème brûlée, chocolate cake, tiramisu, cheesecake, and rice pudding, so dessert does not require a crash course in Turkish sweets. Still, this is one part of the menu where ordering something less familiar pays off.
Baklava gives you flaky pastry, nuts, and syrup in a compact bite; kunefe arrives hot and demands to be shared; katmer leans into pistachio and cream. Pair one with Turkish coffee and the jump from Freehold Raceway Mall to an Istanbul-style finish suddenly does not feel quite so strange.
Just do not make the rookie mistake of ordering one dessert for a table of six and assuming everyone will politely take a bite.
Marmara Offers a Different Kind of Mall Dining Experience
Freehold Raceway Mall already has plenty of places to eat, from quick counter-service spots to familiar sit-down chains, which is exactly why Marmara stands out. The restaurant occupies a former chain-restaurant space but does not feel like a replacement designed from the same template.
At opening, the 5,800-square-foot room was built for roughly 210 diners, with a modern Mediterranean design and enough space for large dinners, private gatherings, and entertainment. Marmara has leaned into that social side of dining from the beginning.
Ayaz originally talked about belly dancing, themed nights, and other live entertainment as part of the plan, and more recent diner listings continue to mention entertainment and group-friendly dining among the restaurant’s features.
The restaurant is also BYOB, which gives local diners a little more flexibility for birthdays and longer dinners.
Location helps, too. Marmara sits on the mall’s first level near the Carousel Entrance, across from Old Navy, and has exterior access, so dinner does not necessarily require wandering through the entire shopping center first.
The restaurant’s own posted hours currently run from 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday and until 10 p.m.
Friday through Sunday. What makes Marmara memorable, though, is not the schedule or even the size of the room.
It is the odd, very Freehold-specific pleasure of walking past mall storefronts and sitting down to bread baked in an Istanbul stone oven, a platter of smoky meze, charred lamb from the grill, and hot kunefe for dessert. Somehow, it fits.