Where to Get Your Haggis On for Burns Night
For more than two centuries, ruddy-faced Scotchmen have been celebrating Robert Burns’s birth, on January 25, 1759, in the form of Burns Night, a ritual supper of haggis — a love-it-or-hate-it highland classic consisting of a sheep’s stomach bag stuffed with ground offal and oatmeal. But of course the evening wouldn’t be complete without loud bagpipes, plenty of Scotch, and a reading of Burns’s “Address to a Haggis” upon presentation of the quivering hot bag of guts: Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!…
Openings
Carroll Gardens Imports the Scottish LowlandsBrooklyn’s beer and bourbon connoisseurs have their headquarters: Bierkraft and LaNell’s, respectively. But where does the single-malt scotch enthusiast go to peruse lowland whiskies and talk piney finishes and peaty aromas? Starting today, Smith and Vine, the Carroll Gardens wine store owned by Patrick Watson and Michele Pravda. They’ve moved down the block, more than doubling their space and establishing one of the city’s biggest single-malt-scotch collection, with between 50 and 80 labels. Stinky, the cheese shop Watson and Pravda opened in the fall, is staying put. We’re just disappointed Smith and Vine hasn’t been renamed Drunky.
Smith and Vine, 268 Smith St., nr. Degraw St., Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn; 718-243-2864.
Correction, Jan. 30, 2007: Smith and Vine was originally misidentified as being in Park Slope.