The term “iconic” is today so over-used as to describe everything from bell bottom bluejeans to Cadillac tail fins. But if the word applies to anything in New York, along with the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building and Rockefeller Center, it would have to be the Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant, which this year turned 111 years old. Yesterday I had lunch there under the magnificent tiled Catalan vaults put in place by Spanish architect Rafael Guastavino, who also did the same at Ellis Island and under the Queensboro Bridge.

As I have for many decades, I pored over the broadside of menu, agonizing over whether to have my old favorites, from the Manhattan clam chowder ($12.95) and crabcakes ($22.95) or the day’s specials, which yesterday included Louisiana catfish fingers with greens and a blue cheese dressing ($30.95) to grilled local swordfish over garlic mashed potatoes and pineapple salsa, grilled eggplant and beer-battered onion rings ($44.95). Then I spotted baby scallops Cape Cod scallops ($24.95), which is an amazingly cheap price, that seasonal wonder rarely seen even in New York restaurants. I called the waiter over and said, “ Please tell me you still have an order of the bay scallops left!” Fortunately he did, and sided with buttery mashed potatoes and lemon wedges I swooned over every morsel of the sweet mollusks sauteed in an abundance of garlic butter. That and a glass of Chablis and I was reminded all over again why this restaurant is both unique and iconic.

The day's fresh Cape Cod bay scallops with mashed potatoes.

The story of its existence—never safe from the wrecker’s ball and once, in 1997, devastated by a fire so hot the tiles fell off—begins with railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt opening Grand Central Terminal in 1913, putting the Oyster Bar in its belly. It would somehow survive Prohibition, when much restaurant business shifted to speakeasies like ‘21’ Club, then flourished during World War II when millions of military personnel came through New York, then declined along with railroad passenger ridership in the 1960’s. At one point those historic tiles were painted aquamarine blue. By the 1970s it was bankrupt.

Fortunately, under the guidance of master restaurateur Jerome Brody, a new Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant was opened and found a whole new audience, both for those who got slurped up their oyster pan roasts at the counter, tourists who were astonished at its size of 440 seats and regulars who ate their several times a week.

The restaurant had always been a union shop but in 1999 Brody granted 49% of the ownership to its huge number of employees, who by 2012 owned it outright as a rare ESOP. (Brody’s wife continues as franchise owner.)

And so, life goes on beneath the Terminal’s great hall, when at precisely 11:30 the doors are unlocked and waiting customers pour in, at first slowly, then in a noontime wave. Frankly, I have never found the reception hosts particularly warm and cuddly, welcomes can be cool; they note names, assign tables to which waiters lead them and present the screed of a menu. Other guests will cram the snaking counters and bar section. The back wall is polished wood, the tables set with red checkered cloths. You are immediately served some of the best biscuits north of the Mason-Dixon Line with a generous dish of butter; later will come crunchy hard rolls.

Each morning the menu is printed and posted on the restaurant's website.

As noted, it’s not easy to make a decision among scores of dishes, most simply prepared, and always from the freshest seafood possible to find in the market. Given the volume the restaurant does at lunch and dinner, one can only imagine the clout the management and chef Juan Lopez have with fishmongers. Each morning at 3 AM Lopez is at the Fulton Fish Market and all his orders are at the restaurant kitchen by 7 AM to be weighed and cut up, scaled and filleted.

So, on an given day you’ll find 25 species of fish, including mahimahi, Arctic char, monkfish, scrod, rainbow trout and black sea bass, two dozen kinds of oysters culled from Beavertail, Rhode Island, to Prince Edward Island. As with those luscious bay scallops, they might have autumn’s Florida stone crabs or shad roe. There are a dozen desserts, housemade. And before you even go, you can check the day’s menu printed every morning on-line.

The bar is well stocked with every kind of spirits and beers, and the wine list, which offers 25 by the glass, is extensive and focused on whites.

New York has plenty of seafood restaurants, from the French Le Bernardin to the Greek Estiatorio Milos to the City Island cafeteria Johnny’s Reef. But none has the Oyster Bar’s history, architecture or abundance. That, and the fact that simply entering the subterranean restaurant, as hungry people have for more than a century, is to understand how a restaurant can be a true icon, as representative of the belly and soul of New York as could be imagined, and certainly one never to be reproduced or built anywhere else.

Open for lunch and dinner Mon.-Fri.