Great bars in NYC: St Andrews, for the Scotch lover

It is rare to find a bar/restaurant around Times Square that a local New Yorker would enter to use the bathroom, let alone go to for a meal and a drink. St. Andrews proves the exception. It calls itself ‘the only authentic Scottish restaurant in New York,” so the waiters wear kilts and there is Haggis on the menu, which is all the average American knows of Scotland. If they had a picture of Mel Gibson in blue face paint, they would have the trifecta.

The secret to St. Andrews is its drink menu. Menu is the key word, as when you sit at the bar, there is a tiny pub food menu, and a normal menu sized one page beer menu. They have a decent tap, but have dozens of imported bottled beers, mostly from the British Isles, many having pictures of Vikings or Viking-like men on the label. Past favorites include Okney Skullsplitter (Viking on the label) and Red McGregor (Scottish Highland warrior on label, 16.9 oz), both Scottish beers, both more alcoholic then American beers. Then there is the Scotch menu (ya, it’s a whole different menu, like a wine list), which has about as many different Scotches as you could hope for. They also have a weekly Scotch tasting order, where you can get a taste of a different Scottish, Irish, and Welsh Scotch each week (will it surprise anyone to learn that usually the Welsh one is the weakest).

There are not a lot of great stories about St. Andrew’s, I’m afraid. The bar’s high prices, limited space, and tourist friendly location makes it more of a stopping off or winding down bar. Many great nights have started there (Hubris’s epic return to intoxication after a dry lent) or came to a close there (The night the Mets lost the ’06 pennant, when I threatened to raze St. Louis to the ground), but it rarely serves as the nerve center of the evening.

It should be noted that the kilt wearing staff are far cooler then they need to be, often giving us discount cards, turning us on to limited edition Scotches, and discussing theatre. They also introduced us to the phrase “Blowing rails of Jack” (We only recently decoded exactly what that means).

Still the bar should be noted in this pantheon, serving a neighborhood desperately in need of a good bar, and offering a drinking experience unlike one is likely to find in this sprawling metropolis.

Also, yes we tried the Haggis, and you know what, it’s delicious.