Just ate at the Oyster Bar at Grand Central  last Thursday evening.  A special was fried Maryland baby softshell crabs, with some kind of aioli that I didn’t even try (or need), and sweet potato fries.
 
I ate at the counter, watching ’em shuck oysters. They must have had 15 or 16 different kinds — a few from the West coast (including British Columbia and Oregon), but mostly mid-Atlantic (the Canadian maritimes, Massachusetts, Rhode Island).   I didn’t have any oysters — I just wasn’t in the mood — but they looked good, and the people around me were devouring them. 
 
I love softshells from my years living in the DC-area. These were very good — small, but tender and juicy.  Deep-fried is not my favorite preparation (I prefer sauteed), but they were still delicious.  Everybody around me was drinking white wine by the glass, but I’d been at a meeting and then walking around in the heat and didn’t feel like any alcohol. I had a fountain Coke, and it was very good., and so were the sweet potato fries. 
 
Service was friendly and quick, at least for me, but they took forever to give the guy seated to my left his bowl of chowder. Not sure what  the glitch was.  This was at about 8 p.m. Thursday, and it wasn’t very crowded.