Quick Bites: Grand Central Oyster Bar

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  December 10, 2012]

Planning to review GCOB?  I wasn't even planning to eat here.  I was headed for the subway after some desperate midtown shopping when my daughter suggested we have lunch at the station.

Why not? It's been a while (even though I had no camera with me).

There's something old school about this place.  You could probably have eaten the same meal at Billy the Oysterman, seventy years ago.  And is it packed?  A late Saturday lunchtime and we waited almost ten minutes to grab seats at one of the sit-down counters opposite the bar.  Service is high-paced (but our server was very sweet), no-monkey-business.

You sit down, and corn bread and poppy-seed crackers are scooped from a drawer and dropped on a plate in front of you.  Water is slooshed into glasses.  Order taken, the food comes fast.  Half a dozen Naked Cowboys from Long Island on the half shell (I just wanted to say the name).  Fried oysters with tartare sauce (out of clam bellies).  Oyster pan roast.

Yes, oysters three very different ways.  The pan roast was packed with the critters, but they were noticeably smaller and less fine, as one would expect, than the fresh variety.  The broth was brick red, creamy, rich, very filling -- especially with the hunk of bread melting in the middle of it.

The fried oysters were crunchy, and there was not meanness about the tartare sauce.  The pan roast is big enough for two, but with the other two (appetizer-sized dishes) we were stuffed.  Not much more than forty bucks (with a glass of Riesling and a Coke).  You could push the bill up by diving into the fancier parts of the raw bar, or ordering $28 main dishes.

Surrounded by happy eaters, really working at their food.  This was New York.