Who

Marc Murphy is the chef and co-owner of Tribeca staple Landmarc, Ditch Plains in the West Village, and a new Landmarc in the Time Warner Center.

Backstory

The son of a diplomat, Murphy spent much of his youth on the move, living in places like France and Italy. After landing in New York after high school, he held down odd jobs, attended the Institute of Culinary Education, and worked as a line cook at Terrance Brennan and Andrew Silverman's Prix Fixe. His initial brush with fame came in 1997 when he became executive chef of Cellar in the Sky, the restaurant atop the World Trade Center. He moved on to head up the kitchen at the now-shuttered Upper West Side French spot La Fourchette, earning glowing write-ups for his old-school French cooking; he followed up with a rare dud in 2000 with the Park Avenue Asian fusion restaurant Chinoiserie.

Murphy went out on his own in 2004 when, with his wife Pamela Schein, he opened the oenophile-centric Landmarc. (Murphy had earned a top-notch wine rep at Cellar.) The Tribeca restaurant quickly became a neighborhood institution, winning praise for its well-curated and unusually affordable collection of wines. The Murphys followed up in late 2006 with Ditch Plains, a Hamptons-themed seafood spot on Bedford Street. Alas, a recent attempt to replicate Landmarc's success didn't turn out as expected. In April 2007, they opened a Landmarc in the Time Warner Center. Flanked by four-star dining temples like Masa and Per Se, the restaurant stands out as one of the tony shopping mall's most reasonably-priced. Unfortunately, both the food and décor left critics unimpressed: Frank Bruni described the restaurant as "inferior" to its Tribeca original, while New York's Adam Platt commented that Clodagh's modern-industrial design reminded him of something from set from the horror movie Saw II. Murphy can take solace in Ditch Plains' recent review in New York: Robin Raisfield and Rob Patronite described it as an "unexpectedly comfortable hangout with consistently good food, [and] genial service."

Personal

Murphy and Schein met in 1997 and married in 2002. (In place of a traditional cake, the couple had a five-tier tower of Krispy Kreme donuts at their wedding.) They live with their two children in Tribeca, not far from the original Landmarc.