Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant

| 17 Feb 2015 | 02:09

Grand Central Terminal

212-490-6650

There's so much testosterone in Grand Central Station, all those men going home or to parts unknown, that just standing in the middle of the rush feels like visiting America-but without the bad outfits. If you go downstairs to Grand Central Oyster Bar, you might be lucky enough to see the incredibly suave manager of the Saloon, Rich Lily, chatting up an investment banker sipping a Gibson, or maybe even a Manhattan.

Milton Katz, a 22-year-old comedian I'm fond of, met me at the bar, wearing both a t-shirt and a tuxedo jacket. Although his career ideas, besides being a comic, range from selling used umbrellas to playing wild poker, Milton did watch cooking shows after school every day as a kid, so he helped me out on the oyster details.

We started out with a Bluepoint from Long Island ($1.75 per piece).

"Now, this is a common and well-known oyster," Milton began. "But it needs hot sauce. It's something I know I like, but I still have to grin and bear my way through it, know what I mean?" He slathered it with horseradish- "the zing in cocktail sauce!"

Next came the Imperial Eagle ($1.95).

"It looks really freaky, and its flavor is almost murky, but in a good way. Sweet, the texture is firm. If the sea were a dessert-"

I tried mine and agreed. The Malepeque oyster tastes like the sea, but the Imperial Eagle does taste a bit like a dessert concocted by the ocean itself.

Rich offered us drinks, but I declined, hissing at Milton out of the side of my mouth not to take the offer.

"I know, I know!" he replied impatiently. I'd warned him earlier not to drink, because, as I explained to Rich, Milton might then end up rolling around on the floor, insulting the clientele, which goes over big on the Bowery but perhaps not in this den of old-timey good taste, beautiful tiling and glossy wood.

Designed in 1913, the Oyster Bar underwent a loving restoration after a large part of the dining-room area was damaged in a 1997 fire. Buy your aunt crab cakes in the dining room, eat by yourself at the lunch counter, or bring a date to the saloon.

As we sipped our shared order of combination stew ($20.45), I noticed the swing-style music. So many restaurants get the food right, but are numb about background music. Rich, however, mixes music for all occasions, and swing is just about perfect for forgetting about your day.

"The broth is really good-creamy! It's delicious bisque with miscellaneous seafood flesh. I like it to be really controlled, though," Milton commented.

Rich showed us the old lunch counters, which serve from 2500 to 5000 people a day, the steam-heated pan-roasting kitchen, and a small pile of oysters that the champion speed shuckers had left behind. He had to go, leaving me with Milton and his brother Andrew, who once came to the restaurant for two weeks in a row, looking for Peter O'Toole.

"Watch him! Watch him," I implored, as Rich strode away.