In Praise of Creepy Wisconsin in Bushwick

The lamb and carpet at the Turk's Inn

Hello! This is for everybody again. As I mentioned, I’ll start having a few “Paid subscriber-only” posts starting in July if you can help out and afford a paid subscription, I’d appreciate it. If not, that’s fine. I’ll still have plenty of free stuff, but anything helps.

My friend Isaac and I have this longstanding, dudes night sort of thing where we go out together, pick a place, and see where the night takes us. I’d say we probably average one every three or four months, both because we both have busy schedules and also maybe because that’s probably the adequate amount of time for our bodies to recover. It’s not like we have some crazy, debauched fun, but I don’t feel great the next morning. If I had to describe it, I’d say it’s like if you took a part from Cassavetes’ Husbands where John, Peter Falk, and Ben Gazzara are at a bar except you made it fun, less depressing, and basically the opposite of that all-time great exploration into toxic masculinity. Isaac and I drink, we eat, and we talk. It’s very simple. Like a detox for the soul and a workout for my liver and stomach.

The one thing about these nights is I think we’d gotten a little complacent about the fact that we live close together, so we mostly stuck to places near our respective apartments. So when it came time to pick a place to go to, I decided we needed a change of scenery. We needed to go to Bushwick and we were going to the Turk’s Inn.

Now before you say anything, yes, Bushwick is in Brooklyn and I also live in Brooklyn. But as anybody who lives here can tell you, getting to some places that aren’t in your immediate area or isn’t Manhattan can require the help of a cartographer. Bushwick is supposedly a 42-minute journey by train, 12 minutes of walking, then the C to the L and eventually you’ll get from my place to our destination, but I can very easily find a way to get lost somewhere along the way. Also, Bushwick is one of those neighborhoods that the very young and cool might tell you is “over,” and that might be. I don’t know. I lived there in 2005, so I’ve seen a solid 15 years of change in action, and all I can say is Bushwick is fun, especially when you compare it to the weird, dystopian glass city along Kent in Williamsburg. I also don’t think a place like Turk’s Inn could exist in Williamsburg, but it’s thriving in Bushwick.

You can read all about it on their website, but the Turk’s Inn is an old Wisconsin supper club transported to Brooklyn. Literally. It was originally opened in Hayward, Wisconsin in 1934 by a couple named George and Isabella Gogia. I’ve been to Hayward. To look at the world’s largest muskie at the National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame. It has insane Beetlejuice vibes and I once drove five hours just to see it. The photo below isn’t mine, it’s from the Hayward Wikipedia, but I figured you needed to see it to understand.

I’ve been going to Wisconsin for years. It felt like an exotic destination when I was a kid, even though the border was about an hour from my home. I’d go skiing on Wilmot Mountain, hockey tournaments up in Lacrosse, or to a friend’s Lake Geneva summer home I tell people they haven’t lived until they’ve experienced a Friday fish fry, that you have to drive in and pay close attention to how the land goes from flat in Illinois to hilly as you close in on state lines, and as a big root beer fan, I consider Wisconsin holy ground since the almighty Sprecher is from there, and Milwaukee is maybe one of the most slept-on cities in America, even if my favorite pizza place straight out of a David Lynch movie is no longer there. I also go back as much as I can because it’s really weird. I think the strangeness of the Midwest often takes a backseat to other parts of the country. The South has its gothic, the West has its spooky, wide-open spaces, and Florida is, well, Florida. All of these places have had their weirdness explored by everyone from Flannery O’Connor to Cormac McCarthy, Carl Hiaasen, and Kristen Arnettt. And the odd Midwest has had its share of representation, Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides comes to mind immediately, while Megan Abbott’s new novel, Beware the Woman is truly one of the only times I’ve seen anything set around Michigan’s Upper Peninsula beside the stuff I’ve read from Jim Harrison or a Roxane Gay story I read a decade or so ago in an anthology. Wisconsin weird is woefully underrepresented in our cultural canon for reasons I’ve never quite been able to understand.

Turk’s Inn weird carpet

That’s why entering Turk’s Inn immediately struck me as something I’d enjoy. I’m all about the experience when I step into a restaurant, and as I walked up to the very out-of-place restaurant on Starr Street, I worried I could be stepping into some very Brooklyn“concept” that would come off as feeling TGI Friday’s for people that went to RISD. My fears went away as soon as I saw the carpet. Carpet! How weird is that in a New York restaurant but normal in restaurants in towns you maybe haven’t heard of? I immediately had this real deep connection to the place because I grew up going to plenty of places that have carpet, but somewhere along the way, restaurant owners realized it’s a lot of work to keep carpet not looking and smelling disgusting given all the stuff people track in and everything that’s spilled on the floor. All the decor, everything—saved for the incredible cat painting that’s the central piece in the main room—was brought over lovingly from the Wisconsin supper club. And the bar. THE BAR! It’s a damn thing of beauty, but also, after I ordered a mezcal negroni since I didn’t want to drink gin, I looked at the menu and saw the house take on the red drink already came the way I ordered it. A place that has a mezcal negroni as the go-to is a place where I feel welcome.

The menu at Turk’s Inn is similarly fun. I thought it would be an afterthought given the fact that it’s already one of the most interesting-looking bars I’ve seen in Brooklyn in forever, but we ordered the relish tray and the mussels, and they brought us plenty of bread. For the main, we split some of the most delicious, succulent lamb lollipops I’ve had in a restaurant in a second. Emily and I make them at home every so often, and you can’t usually beat homemade, but Turk’s Inn makes a good attempt. The standout side was the roasted carrots in red wine vinaigrette, sitting atop some labne, toasted pepitas on top, I thought for a split second we were eating sweet potatoes. They’re cooked so beautifully. After dinner, Isaac and I needed a walk, so we checked out the rest of the space. I was surprised to see their live music space, the Sultan Room, was about as big as Mercury Lounge, but way more interesting looking. It reminded me almost of when you watch some video of an American jazz musician playing in Copenhagen or somewhere like that in the late-1960s. Just really stylish and vibey. On the roof, they’ve got the original neon sign on display, and that’s where everybody hangs. It was a really nice, chill feel. Hanging out on a Bushwick rooftop. Maybe the first time I’d ever done that legally.

But the thing that struck me and has been sticking around in my brain since our dinner is how Turk’s Inn feels totally unlike anything else in New York. It felt totally natural, but also obviously totally obsessed over. Like every little detail is perfect, and the space is incredible. It just keeps going, unfolding into these other spaces like the upstairs or the Sultan’s Room. It’s really a wonderful, off-beat, perfectly executed ode to weird Wisconsin in the middle of Bushwick.