July 20, 2015 — His company, Benchmarc Restaurants by Marc Murphy, operates two Landmarc restaurants, which serve French- and Italian-inspired bistro food, as well as Ditch Plains, inspired by Long Island seafood shacks. His newest restaurant, Kingside at the Viceroy hotel, opened in late 2013 and serves New American cuisine with a focus on seafood. He also operates a catering company, Benchmarc Events by Marc Murphy.
A graduate of The Institute of Culinary Education in New York City, Murphy is a judge on the Food Network show “Chopped,” and also appears on other food shows and morning news shows.
Murphy recently discussed strategies for putting seafood on the menu with Nation’s Restaurant News.
Your restaurants go through a lot of seafood. What are your strategies for sourcing?
I work with suppliers like The Lobster Place and Sea to Table. They’re incredibly conscious of what’s going on. They work with a lot of local fishermen and with people who try to help sustain the fishing industry — and they try to ship within 24 hours.
Of course this winter was a little rough for some of the guys because it was so cold. We had to actually 86 mussels for a while because the fishermen couldn’t get through the ice to get to the mussels.
Where do you get your mussels?
Prince Edward Island. The lobster guys were really having a hard time as well.
But we usually seem to get what we need, and with pricing you go with the flow. You don’t get to say much about that.
I definitely try to buy as local as possible, and I do that as a restaurant customer, too. If I’m in California and I walk into a restaurant, I want oysters from that coast. But I only sell East Coast oysters in my restaurants. I have a strict rule that I don’t want my oysters to have jet lag.