Dan's Papers - January 18, 2008 - When In Manhattan by Amanda Kludt

These days, it's not enough for a New York restaurant to feed you and offer up a little service and ambiance. Now they want to send you home with something as well. From the in-house olive oil, to house cured meats, well-sourced salts, and all manner of pantry items, more and more restaurants are presenting themselves as both market and eatery, urging consumers to extend the dining experience to their own kitchens.

A relative newcomer to this list is Market Table, a West Village spot opened in the old Shopsins space by the people behind Mermaid Inn and Little Owl. As the name would suggest, the menu here is market-driven, with most ingredients coming from the Greenmarket and local bakeries, but there is also a literal market within the space. They sell produce along with the selection of condiments, cured meats and dried fruits from local purveyors.

Never one to miss out on a popular food trend, last year Laurent Tourondel opened BLT Market, an upscale seasonal eatery in the Ritz Carlton. This is one of the more expensive of the market-driven restaurants in the city, and accordingly they sell high-end but well-sourced products like jams, lemon curd, honey and pickled vegetables at their counter on the way out.

For some more high-end goods but with an Italian bent, check out the products sold at downtown farmhouse-themed restaurant Il Buco. The place has been selling its olive oil for years now, but you can also buy salt, white wine, balsamic vinegars, wild fennel pollen and Calabrian peppers - all imported from Italy. Unlike some of these other places, Il Buco is less of a market/restaurant than a place that just decided to sell its best items on the side. Surprisingly enough, the restaurant started out as an antique shop where the owners would invite locals by for lunch. As the food became more popular than the antiques, Il Buco transformed into a restaurant, only selling food products in recent years.

One restaurant that some say started the entire grocery-cum-restaurant trend is Brooklyn's Marlowe & Sons. By day the space functions as a real grocery and café, selling baked goods from Amy's Bread and Sullivan St. Bakery, cheeses from local farms, meats from Fleisher and sundry other artisanal products like honey, chocolate, oil and vinegar. The ambiance is old fashioned corner store, and customers get the feeling they're buying from someone they know. At night the grocery turns into a restaurant with a menu that changes daily and a special selection of oysters and charcuterie.

And just a little way over from Marlowe & Sons in Williamsburg, we now have the newly opened Urban Rustic, a gourmet and all local grocery that also sells a selection of hearty sandwiches and healthy smoothies. Owned by Brooklyn locavore and director of the documentary King Corn, Aaron Woolf, almost everything sold in the store is sourced from within 100 miles. They sell dairy products from local farms, a selection of salami, bread from bakeries in the city and all manner of dried and jarred goods like anchovies, granola and dried fruits and nuts.

So if you want to dine on local and market-driven fare but you also want to take a piece of it home with you, try these grocer/restaurants. They offer an old fashioned flair along with hearty and conscience-free meals.