When certain customers arrive at Public, the Antipodean-Asian restaurant on Elizabeth Street, they come in search of a particular bartender: Brian McRory.

“They say hi and then immediately ask if he is working that night,” assistant manager Kim Johnson said.

Mr. McRory, a handsome Scotsman with a sly, innocent grin, can indeed pour a fine drink and keep up the conversation. Beverage Media magazine named him one of America’s finest bartenders for 2005. But something tempting is also at work. Fans camp out at the bar for bites and drinks. Singles ask him for his phone number. A couple has proposed he join them for a late night romp.

The supporting evidence is not hard to come by. A trio of chipper blondes enjoyed red wine at the bar one Saturday night. They started to whisper as Mr. McRory approached them. He opened his mouth. They giggled. And then they followed him as he turned and moved down the bar. Mr. McRory stopped before a new couple, but he wasn’t simply pushing another $12 Gooseberry and Ginseng Martini. “You get in this fun, kind of mischievous mood where you can ask people direct questions and get to know someone,” he notes.

Mr. McRory lightly acknowledges that customers come by again and again to see him. Still, he plays the naive card like a champion innocent: “All I am doing is making drinks and being funny and courteous to customers.”

The customers, on the other hand, can be a little more aggressive. “One night, this very respectable, kind of hip couple propositioned me and Jasmine [his smart co-bartender, a NYU medical school student] to go back to their house that night,” he said, adding that the invitation implied something more than a friendly chat. He declines such invitations by laughing lightly, and “making sure no one feels insulted.”

With the rising din of the restaurant and Mr. McRory’s manner of speaking, the patrons might miss half of what he says. “The Scottish accent isn’t the easiest to understand,” he said. Still, Mr. McRory casts a spell with a sincere mien. Just the mention of an obscure Australian cabernet reserve or Public’s signature kangaroo dish seals a deal.

“Brian’s the dark haired Jude Law,” a fan with a slight Southern accent, who wished to remain anonymous, said.

Mr. McRory’s cult status is a far cry from his year spent struggling in San Francisco, his first stop in the States fresh from Glasgow. He bar-backed and questioned why he left a plush life in Scotland as a publicist for a boutique hotel. But he learned the trade and landed at Public after moving to New York a few years ago.

“One of the amazing things about America is the fact there is status and credibility being a bartender,” he said. It doesn’t hurt to be a fine gent, either.