Bookshelf

Grand Central Oyster Bar Will Release a 100th-Anniversary Cookbook

The Oyster Bar's pan roast: New York's greatest dish.
The Oyster Bar’s pan roast: New York’s greatest dish. Photo: Hannah Whitaker / New York Magazine

With its mixed currents of commuters in a rush and benthic food, the subterranean Grand Central Oyster Bar is the kind of restaurant that does not draw too much attention to itself. It’s the stately old guard in a city where plenty of other raw bar restaurants have come and gone. In fact, the half-shell palace will celebrate its 100th birthday in two years and accordingly, Publishers Marketplace (subscription required) reports that its longtime executive chef Sandy Ingber and veteran food writer Roy Finamore will pen The Grand Central Oyster Bar and Restaurant Cookbook, celebrating “100 years of delicious meals from the beloved restaurant.”

The book will be published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang, and in addition to serving as a retrospective, it will presumably also be an update to its previous 1999, 1996, and 1977 Oyster Bar books, all of which contain the recipe for the restaurant’s famous pan roast.

Considering that “silky concoction, thicker than soup but gentler than a stew,” New York’s own Adam Platt named it “New York’s greatest dish” earlier this year. One riddle of the oyster pan roast is that without fail, the dish transcends its collected list of mundane ingredients, which include heavy cream, celery salt, Worcestershire sauce, and, of course, oysters. Over the years, cooks and writers ranging from Julia Child to Amy Vanderbilt have attempted, shucking knives in hand, to re-create the famous recipe. Maybe 2013 will be the year we finally crack the code.

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Earlier: Platt: The Oyster Pan Roast Is New York’s Greatest Dish

Grand Central Oyster Bar Will Release a 100th-Anniversary Cookbook