The Alex & The Eleanor + 1

After growing up hearing fond memories of my mom’s visits to Oyster Bar in Grand Central when she was younger, and returning from meeting in Connecticut at lunch time starving, I finally put one and one together and had lunch. Its a perfect place to eat on your own, 3 huge horse shoes and 1 long bar of counters and stools. The space is quite lovely, tall ceilings with all the grandeur of Grand Central. And the clink of silverware seeming quite like a movie from the 50’s. I grabbed a seat at the end of the bar and got a menu. And what a menu it is, quite lengthy.

I settled on the Tuscan white bean soup with shrimp, 6 oysters and fried clams. The soup came quite quickly, and was a very generous portion, and the shrimp were nice - sweet and tender, but the soup itself didn’t really taste like anything and was very thick with an almost wall paper glue like consistency, which can be an OK thing but in this case was strange and off putting. The oysters, I got 2 Kumamoto, which I think of as my favorite but in this case were somewhat bland, 2 Glidden Points from Maine, which were perhaps among the best oysters I have had, creamy and tasting of an ocean breeze and 2 Rocky Points from Alaska, which were more briny tasting, not quite fishy, but close. But all of them were shucked badly, not fully separate from the shell and everyone one had a bit of shell or grit or something inside. The clams were awful. I have never seen a wimpier sized clam, they looked anorexic, if clams can be such a thing. The breading was soggy, and tasted of white glue, and they had not a pinch of salt on them.

So the nostalgia of the clinking glasses and my mothers stories did not meet my expectations. I can not complain about the freshness of the seafood, or the service, but the preparation was bad across the board - the soup, the shucking, the frying. I certainly hope I can find the Glidden Point’s somewhere else because I would love to have some more.

C