Bargain Bite Of The Week: $1 Oysters At Grand Central Oyster Bar Brooklyn

So you love oysters, but you don’t love paying around $3 for each of those little bivalves? If you’re looking for a bargain, and you’re not concerned about a lot of variety, then happy hour at Grand Central Oyster Bar Brooklyn is where you should be slurping.

The new outpost, which opened in December at 256 5th Avenue, is particularly fun to visit if you want to try all sorts of oysters — they regularly have well over a dozen varieties available, representing both coasts. But while picking and choosing can be a wonderful way to find out just the kinds of oysters you prefer, it can get pricey pretty quickly. One or two oysters may be priced below $2 a piece, but the rest go up from there. If you don’t mind sticking to one type, the $1 oyster during happy hour is a great way to go.

Happy hour runs from 5-7pm Monday through Friday, and 10-11pm on Saturday and Sunday. Ask your server what the specials are — on a recent visit, a draft beer and the house red and white wines were $5 and $6, respectively, and the $1 oyster of the day was the Holy Grail out of Chesapeake Bay. A little briny and sweet, they were well worth the dollar, and we liked them best with just a little bit of lemon juice.

Oysters are one of those foods that are just plain weird — god bless the first person to think, “Yeah, I’ll eat that!” — and they’re definitely subjective. One person may prefer a hulking Bluepoint, another may go for the delicate Kumamoto. If you pretty much like them all, take the gamble on the happy hour here, and you can’t go wrong.