The former Marriot Marquis revolving restaurant is running again via restaurateur Danny Meyer as The View
The View
There is much to defy the success of the new restaurant on the 47th and 48th floors of the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square, not least that the hotel itself has long been an intimidating behemoth where simply finding the entrance, exit and elevators can be daunting, and that Times Square, while no longer tawdry, has been taken over by hordes of tourists looking up at the fifty-foot LED screens advertising Broadway musicals and UniQlo and Sephora ads.
Danny Meyer owns multiple restaurants in New York but The View is his most spectacular yet.
Dan Krieger
The hotel and restaurant opened in 1985 at a time when revolving restaurants were already falling out of favor after becoming totems of the 1960s, the first being La Ronde in Honolulu’s Ala Moana shopping center back in 1961 and followed by imitators from Indianapolis to Houston, from Rochester to Detroit. Most closed after the novelty wore off, or, as happened in Atlanta and Dallas, they had serious accidents. The Marriott Marquis’s had a good run before limping to closure in 2021.
Yet when approached about the prospect of getting the restaurant up and spinning again, Master restaurateur Danny Meyer––originally a kid from the Midwest who’s always had a streak of nostalgia to bolster his imagination––thought it a capital idea. He’d already had success downtown with non-revolving top-of-a-skyscraper Manhatta, so what could go wrong?
Below the restaurant at The View is a romantically lighted bar and lounge
THE VIEW
So far, nothing. Completely refurbished by architect David Rockwell, who’s done many of Meyer’s projects, the room’s mechanics had been in good shape and there was a wrap-around cocktail lounge to have fun with and a panorama that could match the Rainbow Room in the nearby Rockefeller Center.
And so it revolves. . . slowly. . . about eight feet per minute, but the real excitement is zooming up in a very fast elevator to the 47th floor, which my two young granddaughters thought a match for any ride in Disneyworld. The dining room is dark, which does allow the lights of the city to pass as if on a carousel (I’d love to see it at twilight), though the recessed lights over the dinner tables go bright and dim for no discernible reason. It is shadowy, with arcade-like recesses and very comfortable booths, and the restaurant is loud (and the live pianist adds to the decibel level, if you’re seated ne.
Lump crabmeat is used for the crabmeat cake as a first course.
The View
The View’s menu is composed of what used to be called “continental cuisine,” an amalgam of American steaks and chops, Eastern oysters, shrimp cocktail and jumbo lump crabcake along with more international flavors like tuna carpaccio, lobster spaghetti alla chitarra,and fried artichokes––which really is not much different from a modern day New York steakhouse menu.
A classic shrimp cocktail with two sauces at The View .
The View
As ever, it’s really about the quality of ingredients and preparation, and the kitchen is not skimping on anything. So the shrimp cocktail is composed of big, fat critters, not too cold and very meaty. The crabcakes really do contain jumbo lump meat with a spicy remoulade, which, given the price of jumbo lump these days, is a bargain at $36. The steak tartare with black trumpet mushrooms and sunchoke chips delivers big flavors, as do the crisply fried artichokes with a garlicky aïoli. I’m a sucker for an iceberg lettuce salad with blue cheese, quail egg and lardons, but the massive wedge one night was not so much crunchy as tough.
Meyer’s restaurants, from Union Square Café to Maialino and Marta, have competed among the city’s best Italian trattorias, proven at The View by the hearty lobster spaghetti alla chitarra with an arrabiata-style spicy sauce.
Spaghetti with lobster is one of the Italian dishes on the menu at The View
The View
Impeccably grilled swordfish came with braised baby artichokes, roasted heirloom piquant cherry tomatoes.
Prime rib au jus is always on the menu but in limited quantity, so order it as soon as you sit down just in case they run out. This mighty dish––once a Sunday dinner fixture when I was growing up––always brings back fond memories of when a great slab of steaming, medium-rare meat with its own ruby juices was an evergreen on menus, here served with an appropriate horseradish cream.
Ribeye is a hefty thick steak perfectly cooked at The View .
The View
The kitchen is not likely to run out of the excellent bone-in ribeye, so feel free to linger over that decision. You have a choice of sauces with the beef for another six bucks. Roast chicken is a ubiquitous dish in town and The View turns out a textbook example that stays very juicy with a crisp exterior.
Such main courses just beg for a bowl of generously buttered mashed potatoes or golden French fries.
A mile-high chocolate layer cake is pure Americana.
The View
The View goes All American with its desserts, not least in its towering devil’s food cake with chocolate caramel ganache to gild the lily. There’s a scrumptious banana oat sundae, and Prosecco-poached pears with bellini sorbet, buttermilk mousse and vanilla streusel. And I am happy to pronounce the “Classic New York Cheesecake” is exactly that, served with vanilla schlag and raspberry sauce.
The wine list is of a sensible size, pretty much equal in selections from France, Italy and the U.S., and with a good number of wines under $80. It’s not a trophy list for the investment banker crowd, and kudos for that, and several bottles I checked against wine shop prices were only about a 100 percent mark-up, which is low in New York.
Whether or not The View revolves––and after a turn or so the novelty wears off––it is an enchanting restaurant with food that competes handily with Meyer’s Manhatta, the Tavern at Gramercy Park and Union Square Café, and it’s less expensive than the first two.
Somehow I think Danny Meyer would have loved to open such a restaurant as The View in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, whose own view would be that of the grand Gateway Arch. And maybe someday he will, with open arms.
THE VIEW
1535 Broadway
212-704-8900
Open nightly for dinner.