Restaurant review, The Gastropub Goes Scottish.

So tell me about your skink soup,” I heard myself say to the London-born waiter, who was gamely sporting a tartan tie. All around me at the Highlands, a self-consciously styled “Scottish gastropub” in the West Village, I imagined, bemused New Yorkers were asking the same question. And why not? At theme destinations like this, everyone’s happy to play the role of tourist for an hour or two. The wallpaper in the snug little dining room (which not so long ago housed an experimental restaurant called P*ong) was patterned with giant pink grouse, like in the bridal suite of a not very grand Scottish bed-and-breakfast. A stag’s head was nailed to the barroom wall. And here and there, youthful, shiny-cheeked pub crawlers were perched on stools, swirling glasses of the prodigious (and prodigiously priced) house selection of blended whiskeys and single malts with evocative, tongue-twisting names like Pittyvaich and Auchentoshan.

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