Consider, for a moment, the barn.

Used for housing the simple necessities of farm life. Or the occasional hay-bed tryst with a farmer's daughter.

And in the right hands, it can make for a great restaurant too...

Introducing The Gallows, the long-awaited, elegantly rustic gastropub replacing the Sage, now open in the South End.

To create the vibe you see here, the owners (a collective brain trust from the Biltmore, East Coast Grill and Erbaluce) actually bought a barn in Vermont, tore it down, took all of its cypress wood and used it to line the inside of this place. Which is really cool—just don't tell your barn preservationist friends about it...

You'll want to come here after work (with friends, co-workers or a date), sinking into one of the plush black leather booths to nosh on Foie Gras Poutine, or a half-dozen Island Creek Selects, which are hand-harvested by the IC oyster farmers for their richer, more buttery flavor.

And if you just want to catch the Celtics as they try to beat back Kobe and that annoyingly classy Derek Fisher, you can do so at the bar over a few Belgian Delirium Tremens on draft, or White Grasshopper cocktails, served with bendy straws in antique glass milk jugs from the 1930s.

Everything tastes better out of a milk jug.