Landmarc's the Spot

LANDMARC 179 W. B'WAY (BETW. LEONARD & WORTH STS.), 212-343-3883

PICTURE A medium-sized room with brick on two sides, exposed silver ducts along the ceiling and a window so big it's more of a glass wall. The room is on a second floor, facing west, with no skyscrapers around it, so evenings arrive with a flood of sunset light. This is the upstairs dining room of the new Tribeca restaurant Landmarc.

The room works as a metaphor for the restaurant's approach. The space is proud in its utilitarian shell; the menu is also broad and free of frills. The bricks and ducts match the dignified industriousness of Landmarc's stoic servers. And that golden light represents the wisdom of the people who designed this newcomer, who are succeeding in defiance of stale convention. These owners noticed that much of what makes a restaurant impressive doesn't necessarily add value for diners. The response Landmarc aims for is not awe, but enjoyment.

You'll want to raise a toast to these bringers of light when you see Landmarc's wine list. The markup on most bottles is 20 to 40 percent, instead of the usual 300! For this stunning generosity, you lose only the option of ordering by the glass (a diverse selection of half-bottles renders this drawback a non-issue). My party had no trouble working out the math: for bottles that retail in the $15-$20 range, Landmarc's deal amounts to about two and a half for the price of one. Of course everyone drinks up the savings. The list is long and bountiful, as well as astonishingly cheap.

The menu, also unconventional, takes a bit more time to get used to. It's a single sheet of plain paper that folds out to the size of a tabloid newspaper. There's so much on it you might feel as if you're reading the classifieds. It starts to make sense after a couple of readings.

In top-story position is a long list of salads, all available in starter or entree sizes. To the left are the hot appetizers and a pasta for each day of the week, also offered in small and large versions. Smack in the middle of the menu is a mussels section, with five sauces to choose from (and again, two sizes). Beneath, a similar column for steaks—one size this time, but six options of cut and five of sauce. To the left of the steaks are the other entrees, mostly American bistro fare. To the right are house specials, mostly Parisian bistro fare.

Puzzling, yes. Landmarc couldn't make it more clear that they're not trying to steer you anywhere. It wants you to get in touch with your feelings. Realization comes gradually that you're in the mood for either steak, seafood, salad or pasta. Or maybe some combination, or maybe none of those. Maybe the question is which dish will go best with the wine (that you're practically stealing). Regardless, after that initial, categorical assessment, the path to an order becomes clear.

I'll start with the pasta. Seeing as there's only one per day, you might expect it to be an afterthought. No way. The Thursday pasta is orecchiette alla norcina—ear-shaped pasta with sausage in a peppery cream sauce, topped with fresh grated parmesan. It was a thing of near-beauty, with robust sweet sausage luxuriating on firm pillows of noodle, themselves resplendent in a bath of dairy freshness.

Exhibit B: fish. Landmarc's pan-seared salmon was also excellent. I'm glad one of my companions ordered it, because I'd completely given up on the dish. This version surpassed the bland standard by more than two-and-half times. A side of stewed black lentils with mustard was superb company for the rich, almost-raw fish.

French mustard played a starring role in one of the specials from the Parisian side of the menu: rognon à la moutarde, veal kidneys. The meat didn't taste all that different from liver, though the consistency was closer to that of popcorn shrimp. A sauce of hillside-springy herbs and mustard is what made the dish more seasonally festive than, say, a bistro plate of liver with bacon. If you try the rognon, be sure to order a wine full-bodied enough to compete with its mouth-coating flavor.

Our party's beef aficionado chose strip steak with green peppercorn sauce. No complaints about the cut or the sauce—or Landmarc's outstanding fries—but he found his steak too dry, overdone. He'd ordered it medium, and it was definitely done a bit beyond that. Maybe I'm too much of a restaurant critic, but I feel like if you don't order medium-rare, you're sort of asking for trouble.

An exquisite lamb shank entrée offered a hint of what might have been with the steak. The most popular dish at our table, it was delicately braised, with earthy natural juice suffusing a bed of celery root puree, brussels sprouts and bacon. The feel was cup-runneth over, all night long.

That's what dinner out should be. It's amazing how routine it is for restaurants to put up obstacles in the path to uninhibited pleasure. Rooms ostentatiously fancier or hipper than the places you usually spend time; menu strategies that optimize profit without regard for diners' comfort level; runners ordered to constantly pour patrons' wine, as if the house were buying it; servers calling attention to themselves with overfamiliar banter or mincing motions—it's hard to realize how obnoxious these things are until they're gone.

Weaker plates at Landmarc were a nicoise salad with defrosted-tasting seared tuna, not remotely in the same league as the salmon (the frisee salad with lardons and red wine vinaigrette, though, was stellar). The restaurant's shallots, parsley and white wine mussel sauce is a no-holds-barred garlic extravaganza that it'd be nice to try again, but with better mussels. Likewise, we could only suspect that our appetizer of warm goat cheese profiteroles would have been delicious if it'd truly been warm.

Landmarc's finishing touch is an offer of all six desserts for $15. Crème brulee, blueberry crumble, tarte tatin, lemon tart, chocolate mousse and granitas come in white ramekins holding just enough for everyone in a big party to taste everything. (That's another obnoxious thing almost all restaurants do: serve more dessert than you want, for more than you want to pay.) The check for six came to $300 including tip and those two-and-half bottles of good wine. Three days later we were all ready to go back.