Fans of Café Gray’s spiced venison loin and skate schnitzel may want to make a reservation promptly at that Time Warner Center restaurant. Amid a shaky economic climate, Gray Kunz’s upscale café, popular with Manhattan’s social set, will close its doors for good at the end of June after a three-and-a-half-year run, according to restaurant staffers. When the eatery opened in October 2004, it earned mostly positive reviews for the food — and mostly negative ones for its open kitchen, which gave cooks glorious views of Columbus Circle and Central Park, but largely denied them to its patrons. A spokeswoman for the restaurant did not return calls, but receptionists, who did not give their names, at Café Gray and at Mr. Kunz’s 7-month-old Midtown eatery, lounge, and event space, Grayz, confirmed the Time Warner Center eatery’s June 30 closing date — and that there are no plans to reopen.

A second location of the Italian restaurant A Voce, situated near Madison Square Park, has been mentioned on the Grub Street Web log as a possible successor to the space. Chef Andrew Carmellini, the Café Boulud alumnus behind A Voce, said rumblings of a Time Warner Center opening “are all rumors at this point,” though the restaurant’s publicist said that A Voce partners are indeed looking to open another Manhattan eatery. Mr. Carmellini added: “I’m looking into all sorts of fun stuff.”

As the name Café Gray implies, the cuisine and the space are decidedly more casual than those of the now-shuttered Lespinasse, the fine-dining establishment that put Mr. Kunz on the city’s culinary map. Lespinasse, where the Singapore-raised chef exhibited Central European precision, and embellished his fare with bold Southeast Asian accents, opened in the St. Regis Hotel in 1990. The restaurant’s cuisine had received one of the highest ratings in the Zagat dining guide, 28 out of 30. Mr. Kunz’s would not be the first restaurant to close in the Time Warner Center. Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s V steakhouse was pilloried in reviews and shuttered in late 2005.

Chicago-based celebrity chef Charlie Trotter was expected to open a restaurant in the high-end shopping and dining center, but Marc Murphy’s less expensive bistro concept, Landmarc, arrived instead. Mr. Murphy, who also operates a Landmarc location in TriBeCa and Ditch Plains in the West Village, says business at his Columbus Circle restaurant is “in one word, fantastic.” He added: “We couldn’t be happier. Love the Center, love the building; it’s a great, great business to be in.”

However, he acknowledged that Time Warner Center’s Landmarc restaurant might be less affected than its neighboring restaurants by the economic downturn because it is a “restaurant for the people” — and its dinner entrées do not exceed $27. Entrées at Café Gray, as well as at other Time Warner Center restaurants, such as Porter House, Per Se, and Masa, can cost significantly more.

Still the Porter House, where a filet mignon with a side of spinach runs about $55, is, for the most part, defying the slowdown, according to its chef and partner Michael Lomonaco.

“From the very beginning we’ve been able to fill our seats and keep our restaurant buzzing,” he said, noting that dinner business is strong and lunch has been rising in recent months. “We’re very happy with our progress,” Mr. Lomonaco said. “There have been days or weeks when there might have been particularly distressing news where we see a blip or two [in restaurant traffic] but the outlook is good here. We’ve been really holding our own and doing the kind of business we want to.”

Indeed, a number of recently announced closings in Midtown have been blamed not on bad business amid a faltering stock market, but on rent hikes.

Not far from the Time Warner Center is San Domenico, the 20-year-old fine-dining Italian restaurant on Central Park South, which will be closing in mid-June, just before its lease expires. Owner Tony May said he is looking for a larger space so he can do more business. He said he will need to bring in at least $9 million annually to cover the Midtown rent, food, energy, and labor, and still turn a profit.