Sneak Peek Inside Grand Central Oyster Bar Brooklyn, Which Aims To Open December 1
Today Grand Central Oyster Bar Brooklyn owners Jonathan Young and Bruce Fox gave a tour of the space at 254 5th Avenue, which formerly housed Fornino, and they said they’re hoping to have the new 150-seat restaurant and fish market open on December 1.
With a menu that will change every day, and plans for daily lunch and dinner plus brunch on the weekend, don’t expect everything to be all set on opening day. The pair plans on taking things slowly, testing out different ideas, and gathering input from locals.
“Since it will be more of a neighborhood place than the Grand Central location, we want to please everybody within the context,” said Young, pictured above, on the left, with Fox. “If something’s a miss, we will change it.”
Though there will be some familiar items on the menu — including their classic pan roasts, stews, and chowders — the focus here will be on shellfish, from oysters and clams to lobster, crab, and shrimp, including a number of locally-sourced oysters from the north and south shores of Long Island. Plus, they say a big difference will be the addition of daily pastas specials to the menu.
“We’re going to concentrate more on the shellfish, to make sure we do it right, Fox said. “Because it changes daily, we can play with it, change it up if something doesn’t work.”
There will be several echoes of the Grand Central space in the Park Slope restaurant, from the arches throughout the space — like in the dining room, pictured above — to a mural of the Grand Central restaurant that will be painted along a wall in the main dining space. A unique addition will be a 7-foot-diameter chandelier that comes from the Grand Central space, which the owners say wasn’t allowed by Landmarks to be reinstalled there after a fire in 1997.
The tiles, too, are a part of Grand Central. The ones that are being installed in three arches on the outside of the restaurant are the same exact ones found in Grand Central, special ordered to be installed here.
Back inside, the main dining room (which is, if looking from the street, to the far left in the space) has a wall between it and the bar in the next third of the space. The door can close the dining room off for private events.
In the middle third is the bar and lounge (and back behind the dining room and bar are “plenty of bathrooms,” Young assured). The owners said they’ll have a happy hour, and are thinking about having a late-night happy hour as well to attract the after-work crowd of chefs and employees from other local restaurants.
The restaurant will have have a full liquor license, and they’ll have 10 beers on tap, four wines by keg, a large wine list (but not nearly as large as the list at Grand Central, which Young said was at about 450 bottles), and they may even be able to do Prosecco on tap, “which will be great for brunch,” Young added.
They also said they they may develop some kind of frequent oyster-eater card. “I would love to get Adam Richman in here to try to see how many he could eat, since I hear he lives in the area,” said Young, acknowledging that the foodie TV host may not be as much about endurance eating as he once was.
The open kitchen will also have a bar with seating. There or anywhere in the space diners will be able to choose from 16 or possibly more varieties of oysters, which will be delivered fresh daily. They’ll have oysters from both coasts, and some international ones if possible.
They said they’ll do what they can to encourage kids to be adventurous seafood eaters, like offering them an oyster for a quarter if they’re curious enough to try one. And for grown-up neighbors who don’t have much experience with oysters, they hope to host events so people can try several varieties treated in different ways.
That plan to spread excitement about shellfish will extend to the fish market, which will be in front of the kitchen, on the far right (from the street) of the space.
“People were always asking me where they could get oysters in Brooklyn,” Young said when explaining why they’ll have a fish market in the space, “so I want to provide that.”
In addition to take-out oysters, which they won’t be able to shuck if you’re taking them to go but which they will teach you how to do yourself, they said they’ll be happy to share the recipes for their dishes.
“If you’re buying a piece of fish and you see a salmon dish we’re doing on the menu, we’ll let you know how to make it,” Fox explained.
Young, who moved to Park Slope in the mid-1990s and now resides in Greenwood Heights, said he’s seen the neighborhood change quite a bit in that time, and that he’s glad to have a chance to be a part of the restaurant scene at this moment.
“And after being in the basement of Grand Central for ten years, it’s nice to see the light again,” he said, pointing at the still-papered windows.