Cafe Centro

Profile

Housed in a one-time Pan Am Airlines ticket office, this sprawling brasserie in the lobby of the MetLife Building has kept some of the old charm. The popular large patio, the glassed-in kitchen, the open dessert station, and the corner fire pit where fowl rotates on spits make Café Centro feel like an upscale buffet in a swanky Vegas hotel. Suits and tourists turn here for aptly executed meals, heavy on the surf-and-turf. Executive chef Denis Sevie further obliges with hearty, crowd-pleasing plates that span the Mediterranean: raw bar offerings, French and Italian fare, Moroccan food for exotic flair. The steak frites are dependable; the gnocchi, pillowy. In keeping with the rest, desserts are equally hard to discount. — Pervaiz Shallwani

Steak frites, $36; bisteeya, $12.50