It began as a whisper, but the word on New York’s streets is quickly becoming a roar. A new taste sensation has hit town, and in every plush eaterie from the Bronx to the Bowery they’re calling it the year of the Scottish langoustine.

Seized upon by Manhattan’s top chefs, the humble Scottish crustacean has become the toast of New York’s premiere nightspots. Plucked from obscurity off the coast of Skye and flown first-class to the city’s most renowned kitchens, an ecstatic local press is now hailing the Caledonian treat as one of the metropolis’s gastronomic highlights.

“After aeons dwelling off muddy North Sea shores, the Scottish live langoustine has come out of its shell. Luscious and prized, the little crustacean with funny black eyes is the creature of the hour on tables from TriBeCa to the Upper East Side,” said New York Post critic Steve Cuozzo.

“Forget Maine lobsters that turn to leather in the kitchen. The langoustine’s silky texture and succulence are unique.”

Over a tonne of live langoustines is now flown into the Big Apple every month. Caught in creels off the coast of Skye, within 24 hours they are fetching as much as $12 (£6) apiece on the tables of New York’s most prestigious restaurants.

The Scottish langoustine was propelled into the limelight after appearing in the signature dishes of culinary luminaries such as the internationally renowned Alain Ducasse and Daniel Boulud, former Le Cirque executive chef and restaurateur whose epony-mous Upper East Side eaterie DANIEL is considered one of New York’s finest.

Eventually the local media caught the scent and responded with enthusiasm. The New York Post reported that the Scottish langoustine “drew gasps” when unveiled as part of chef Jason Hicks’s Scottish game menu at Orsay recently.

And The New York Times’s legendary food critic, the late RW Apple Jr, even prompted an outraged letter-writing campaign from readers in Maine with an article entitled Lobster’s Little Cousin, And Its Envy, in which he pronounced the Scottish langoustine superior to that state’s famous seafood produce.

The langoustine’s success is made all the more remarkable by the fact that three years ago, no Manhattan chef had so much as laid eyes on a live one.

It all began in 2003, when Kilmarnock native Andrew Hamilton – who emigrated to the US to marry and retire – began extolling the virtues of live langoustines to the staff of a midtown Greek restaurant. The chefs challenged him to bring samples, and three days later the first live consignment arrived.

Word at first spread slowly through New York’s kitchens, but, since the turn of the year, demand has escalated to such an extent that Hamilton and his wife are now treated as honoured guests in most of the city’s top restaurants.

“They call me Mr Langoustine. These people are at the very top of the food world, but they can’t get enough of these creatures,” said Hamilton.

“It’s all down to taste. Put simply, Scottish langoustines brought live to the kitchen and cooked immediately cannot be beaten for taste, texture or versatility.”

Four days a week, Hamilton’s contacts now set out in their boats to raise their creels from the seas around Skye. Transferring the catch to an onboard holding tank, the langoustines are then disembarked onto another tank onboard a lorry and then shipped alive to Eyemouth.

From there, the creatures are shipped to Heathrow for the transatlantic flight, then whisked to expectant kitchens throughout Manhattan and served within a day of leaving Scottish waters.

As America’s sole importer of live langoustines, Hamilton has become an unwitting ambassador for Scottish foodstuffs. It is a role he is proud of, but still finds somewhat surprising.

“I like the fact that I’ve started a new market for Scottish produce. It’s been very satisfying,” he said.

“It is strange though. This is a country of 250 million people. You can get everything and anything you want here, but somehow I stumbled across the one thing they’d never seen before.”