Marc Two

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The New York Sun

The last slot in the “Restaurant Collection” at the Time Warner Center has finally been filled, with a rather different sort of restaurant. Marc and Pamela Murphy’s Landmarc has been a casual favorite in TriBeCa for several years, popular for its hearty food and friendly wine list. But the new industrial-chic, hangar-size version, which shares quarters in the Midtown mall with high-flyers such as Per Se and Masa, feels like a rock among jewels, sturdy but unlovely. While its neighbors serve $300 prix-fixe dinners to culinary pilgrims, Landmarc is less a dining destination and more a hearty refueling station for ravenous shoppers and tourists.

Iron bars and exposed rivets give the enormous, 300-seat restaurant a grim, gray feel that’s offset by sunny views through wraparound windows. Looking down the length of the busy dining room, one feels the urge to do math: Even if all 300 people drop just a stingy $25, that compares pretty favorably with Masa’s $300 dinners served to 26 seats a night. And that’s just one seating: Landmarc does business 19 hours every day, serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Rent in the mall must be astronomical, but it’s volume that allows the Murphys to mark up their wines so minimally.

The menu abounds in plain, affordable favorites — burgers, steaks, pastas — with an interesting sideline in offal. There are plenty of familiar appetizers, like a gooey, skillful French onion soup ($8) and fried calamari with marinara sauce ($10), but also a plate of roasted bones ($12) with ineffectual wooden forks for scooping out the fatty marrow and smearing it on rustic toast. Light, puffy ricotta fritters ($9) come with the same sauce as the calamari, but with a skill that sets them apart from bar food. You can get a salad with shrimp ($13), which wouldn’t be out of place at the Olive Garden — or one that would ($11), with chewy snails nestling among the frisée.

Motley menu categories include mussels and clams, entrees, “special” entrees, and daily pastas, the latter of which are available in half or whole portions: A half is a substantial meal. I tried orecchiette alla norcina ($12/$18), a thick cream-bound agglomeration of ear-shaped pasta and lumps of sweet sausage that’s full of flavor but weighs on the digestion for hours. Other days feature spaghetti Bolognese, linguine with clams, and so forth.

The “entrées” rubric is where the dullest fare lives: grilled salmon ($22), grilled tuna ($26), roast chicken ($21), as well as a fine piece of monkfish ($22) tricked out with crumbled chorizo and fresh peas. Steaks, handsomely charred and flavorful, get their own menu category, which encompasses skirt ($23), hanger ($26), strip ($28), filet mignon ($34) and ribeye ($34) varieties, as well as a fat and juicy burger ($13). There’s a steakhouse-style choice of sauces: bordelaise, chimichurri, and so forth, to moisten the already juicy meats. Beef in its various configurations is decidedly one of the restaurant’s strong points; however, it’s consistently paired (“no substitutions,” insist the menu and the staff ) with one of the weakest: mealy, bland, pale french fries.

Then there’s the offal, regarding which the staff seems a little nonplussed. “That’s pig intestine stuffed with pig blood!” exclaimed one incredulous waiter when I ordered the blood sausage ($20). When I persisted, he diplomatically changed his tack: “The kitchen made us try it and it’s actually pretty good.” It was very good, if you like such things, soft and rich and delicately seasoned, with onions and apples providing a sweet counterpoint. Fried sweetbreads ($25) are excellently crisped, with creamy middles, but their subtle flavor drowns tragically in a horseradish-laced reduction. A thick piece of sautéed calf’s liver ($22) nestles in a fresh-tasting méélange of peas, onions, and crunchy cooked romaine lettuce that aptly offsets the liveriness.

Wine is what built Landmarc’s reputation, with a broad and deep list of bottles and more than 50 half-bottles — but nothing by the glass — at prices comparable to a retail shop’s. So patrons can enjoy budget half-bottles like Jed Steele pinot or Perrin Chateauneuf du Pape for under $25, or full-size bargains on grands crus, such as a 1989 Chateau Brane-Cantenac priced to move at $160.

In a clever stroke, desserts — blueberry crumble, tiramisu, a Nutella-filled eclair — come in smallish but still satisfying portions for $3 apiece; gluttons (and reviewers) can sample all six for $15. A strong vanilla flavor and thick sugar crust make the crème brûlée the only standout; or opt for an excellent petite cone of gelato.

Decidedly not a big-ticket destination, Landmarc fits strangely among its big-ticket neighbors, but, with its plethora of affordable treats for all comers, the cavernous new restaurant is uniquely at ease in the mall setting.

Landmarc (Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle, third floor, 212-823-6123).


The New York Sun

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