For some of us, our experience of...

For some of us, our experience of New York’s Grand Central Oyster Bar is limited to eating at the oyster counter and watching the cooks work the steam kettles, turning out bowl after bowl of oyster stew and oyster pan roast. If we lived in New York, we might get around to eating more than all the oysters we can slurp and a bowlful of stew--in the mid-’70s, after a sad decline, the restaurant reinvented itself as a great American seafood house. Some of the restaurant’s best recipes are included in “The Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant Complete Seafood Cookbook” (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $27.50), compiled and edited by Mark Abrahamson, vice president and general manager of the restaurant.