Marchi's Restaurant: Where You Get It All Without Asking For It

By Mitch Broder

I sat in Francesca and Lorenzo’s bedroom and ate for two hours straight.

I wish that Francesca and Lorenzo could have been there with me, not that I would have shared.

But though they are gone, it was their food that I ate — all five courses of it — at one of the great forgotten meals of Manhattan: dinner at Marchi’s Restaurant.

The key word here is “one,” because that’s what Marchi’s serves — one meal, the same meal, every night, six nights a week. Like many buildings in the city, its building has a sign that says “No Menus.” But here the sign has double meaning. There’ve always been no menus at Marchi’s.

No, that's not us.

I’ve posted the tale of how  Francesca and Lorenzo Marchi’s apartment got turned into a restaurant in the thirties and a one-meal restaurant in the forties. But I didn’t try the meal. That was wrong. I suffered deep regret. I returned to make amends. My selflessness is self-serving.

I was seated in the part of the main dining room that was indeed once the bedroom and now feels like a living room where you can settle in, which you do. My hosts were the Marchis’ son Mario and his wife Christine, who run the restaurant with Mario’s brothers and treat you like guests in their home, which it still is.

My own guest was Patricia, who unlike me can cook and whose culinary observations transcend my customary “Um” and “Ick.” Our waiter welcomed us. I had the dinner. Patricia, too, had the dinner. There were no questions and no answers — only certainty in an uncertain world.

The meal began with warm bread. Um. Then came the first course, with an artful centerpiece of honeydew, radishes, celery, tomatoes, and fennel. This was accompanied by a platter of salami and a platter of Lorenzo Salad, featuring red cabbage and tuna. Patricia wanted the recipe. She didn’t get it.

The second course was the one that I was most excited about: the Lorenzo Lasagna. Christine calls it their signature dish. The bowls arrived. I rose to photograph them. “It smells so good,” Patricia said. “Hurry up and take your picture.” I decided to hear that as supportive.

At a five-course meal you need to make choices, and I made mine: I chose to have all of my lasagna, no matter what lay ahead. Patricia said: “It’s a very delicate lasagna.” I said: “Um. Pass the bread.” We had now both had enough dinner. We had three courses to go.

The next was fried fish, which the waiter said was cod but which Mario said was catfish. Either way, it was skillfully done. “It’s creamy, with a light crunchy topping,” Patricia said. It came with green beans and beets, most of which I left for her. I’m famously generous with my green beans and beets.

Soon we were served roast chicken and sliced roast veal, along with a platter of sautéed mushrooms and a bowl of tossed salad. The chicken was as tasty as any I’ve had, yet Patricia didn’t say a word. It turned out she was in poultry paradise: “I was too busy eating it to speak.”

At last we came to dessert, which had no chocolate and yet was perfect. It comprised fresh fruit, provolone, warm lemon fritters, and crackly crostoli. I had a perfect orange and a perfect banana and the crostoli and the fritter, which was like warm pudding with a crispy coating, and which I thus forgot to shoot.

Patricia and I had a wonderful, charming, old-fashioned homemade meal, and we marveled that people weren’t still lining up outside to get it, the way they used to.

“Back in the sixties you had a full meal,” Mario said. “If you were Italian you sat down for three hours. With people today, it’s ‘Gimme a sandwich, gimme a beer, I’m on my way.’”

Too bad for people. But not for all of them. Marchi’s still has its clientele, and its absence of menu choices appears to be an asset.

It allows you to savor the meal again and again, like a good book, Mario said: “By the fourth or fifth time, you really enjoy what’s being put in front of you.”

Take your time at Marchi’s, 251 East 31st Street, at Second Avenue, New York City.

Marchi's Restaurant: New York City's Longest Wait for a Menu

By Mitch Broder

In the end, it doesn’t matter that they have no menu at Marchi’s, because they bring you every food that would be on the menu if they had one.

This is just the beginning.

They bring you fresh fruits and vegetables. They bring you tuna and salami. They bring you lasagna. They bring you fried fish. They bring you more vegetables. Then they bring the main course.

That would be the roast chicken and the sliced roast veal, along with the cooked mushrooms and the fresh tossed salad. Then they bring more fruit, cheese, lemon fritters, and crostoli. The only thing they don’t bring is seconds. Then again, no one has asked.

This is the meal they serve six nights a week. This is the meal you eat if you want dinner. It is a five-course Italian feast in Manhattan that has yet to cost fifty dollars — but is finally going to, starting next month, so go now to save two bucks.

A few restaurants have no menu because they are trying to be chic. Marchi’s has no menu because it was Lorenzo and Francesca’s apartment. They started a restaurant in it because Lorenzo had a bad hernia operation and couldn’t keep working in construction. But both of them could cook.

This was in 1930, when Louis De Marco lived upstairs. He smelled the Marchis’ cooking each night till he couldn’t take it anymore. He begged to join them for dinner. He said he’d pay fifty cents. He brought friends, and they brought friends, and everyone brought fifty cents.

By 1935, the entire apartment was a dining room. The Marchis still made one dinner, though they made a different dinner each night. During the war, because of shortages, they made the same dinner each night. After the war, they went back to different dinners. But by then it was too late.

“Our customers weren’t in favor of that,” says Lorenzo and Francesca’s son Mario. “They said: ‘What the hell are you doing?’ It lasted a year or two. They wanted what we had been doing, not what we were doing.” The family agreed on one meal. They’ve been serving it for sixty-six years.

Lorenzo and Francesca are gone, except on the walls, but the restaurant is run by Mario and his wife Christine, and Mario’s brothers, John and Robert. I sat with Mario, Christine, and John one afternoon, and they shared their history. Then they shared their autograph book.

It contains names including Sophia Loren, Joe DiMaggio, and Donald O’Connor. It also contains names that none of us could read. But the brothers recall serving Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, Nat King Cole, Charles Laughton, Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, Toscanini and Pavarotti.

And Grace Kelly.

And Liberace.

Today the restaurant has five rooms, yet it still feels like Grandma and Grandpa’s house. And it still feels like a secret club: Along with no menu, it has no sign. The only thing on the outside is a family coat of arms. Christine says people peek in and ask, “Is this an embassy?”

Dinner is $49.75 till September 1^st, when it becomes $51.75. I haven’t tried it yet, but the Marchis fed me their sweet crunchy crostoli.

I can now say confidently that I would pay $51.75 for five courses including that pastry, along with the opportunity to make absolutely no decisions for a whole night.

Save now at Marchi’s, 251 East 31st Street, off Second Avenue, in Manhattan.