“How sad,” the cry always goes up when a much-loved restaurant closes. The trouble is that the restaurant wasn”™t loved quite enough by the people sending up the cry, or it would not have had to close. “Too little too late” is the takeaway there ”” which applies not only to restaurants, of course, but to so much of what we think we value in life.
The Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant ”” which opened three weeks after the famed Manhattan terminal”™s Feb. 2, 1913 debut ”” is almost a case in point. I say “almost,” because this historic eatery, with its celebrated arches and tiled vault ceiling by designer and architect Rafael Gustavino, is still open, though just barely. On two recent visits, when the handful of diners looked like microdots in a restaurant that comfortably seats around 350, I feared for its future.
Pre-Covid, the restaurant served up to 1,500 customers daily across its four areas ”” the main bar and dining room, the three U-shaped counters and the clubby Saloon ”” and while I don”™t know the figures today, my amateur head count indicates danger. (The restaurant is currently closed Saturdays and Sundays.)
But it”™s not all doom and gloom. As workers return to offices and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) continues to improve its schedules and reduce journey times, Grand Central Terminal”™s footfall is increasing, which can only benefit the Oyster Bar. Tourists, too, love the place, and their numbers in New York City are already back to pre-Covid levels and rising. Indeed, it may be tourists who have kept the Oyster Bar going this long and whom we may have yet to thank for preserving it.
The bottom line, though, for any restaurant, irrespective of how exceptional the site, the décor or the view, must be the food (here helmed by chef and buyer Kamran Naseem). Does the Oyster Bar still make the grade? Spoiler alert: I think it does.
Fish comes in daily from The New Fulton Fish Market in the Bronx, with the daily, date-stamped menu featuring up to 20 varieties of oyster, along with the freshest clams, scallops, shrimp, squid and lobster, all prepared in myriad ways. The number of combinations and permutations is mind-boggling. Clam chowder, New England or Manhattan style, is the equal of any I”™ve enjoyed up and down the coastal waters of the Northeast, and the clam stew (which in Oyster Bar-speak is actually a soup) or the restaurant”™s famous pan-roast, which is the same stew with an added slice of toast and chili sauce, would win prizes were gongs awarded for such types of dishes alone. A lobster cocktail appetizer comprises a claw, less substantial than the jumbo shrimp cocktail but both singing of the sea, served with its trusty red cocktail sauce. Although my personal preference for a shellfish sauce is a homemade mayonnaise or aioli, that is not how things are done at the Oyster Bar and we bow graciously to tradition.
There are teetering shellfish platters, shrimp and crab with pasta and fried seafood ”” including fried Ipswich clams with tartar sauce, another of my favorites ”” and a whole array of white and pink fish. You”™ll likely find char, trout, salmon, tuna, monkfish, bass, bream and more under the heading “Today”™s Catch.” And don”™t forget about the lobster roll, which always makes a very satisfying lunch or light supper.
The wine list is exceptional in having 30 whites and a similar number of reds available by the glass and, while I don”™t think the list is especially modern or eclectic, it certainly offers you a lot of choice at a modest markup, the majority of bottles priced at under $60. There are cocktails, too. On my last visit, a dry martini arrived in two minutes flat and, although it was not emphatically dry, I found the almost obsolete custom of serving the leftovers from the cocktail shaker (that is, the liquid that doesn”™t fit in the cocktail glass) as an “extra” free drink in a little beaker of its own, to be both generous and charming.
With its wonderfully old-fashioned hierarchy of managers, servers and runners ”” all of whom you need to manage a room this size, even if, sadly, it is not always full; its famous red-checked tablecloths and chairs so comfortable that before you know it a bottle of wine has turned into two or even three and you are in danger of missing the last train home ”” there is so much to love about the Oyster Bar. I”™m also a pushover for those sailor caps the runners wear, an exercise in high camp if ever there was. If ever you miss Fleet Week, come here instead for the full-on Navy experience.
With few changes of ownership over the years since its Cornelius Vanderbilt days, the Oyster Bar is now helmed by its employees, under the Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP), which rents the space from the MTA and provides staff with a retirement plan and ensures the continuity of Forgive me for the somewhat flippant analogy, but to echo the words of President John F. Kennedy, it is not only a question of what the wonderful Oyster Bar can do for you, but what you can now do for the Oyster Bar, one of New York”™s great dining institutions, to keep it alive.
Basically, it is this: Go eat there.
For more, visit oysterbarny.com
