There is a bar in Bushwick that looks like your Turkish grandmother’s living room collided with a 1970s Wisconsin supper club, and the collision produced something so magnificent that people travel across the city just to sit inside it. The walls are deep red. Taxidermied animals peer down from shelves. A portrait of a mustachioed man named George the Turk hangs behind the bar. And somewhere out back, through a door that opens onto something even stranger, a full concert venue is running until 2 AM.
This is Turk’s Inn — and it is one of the most singular after-dark experiences in New York City.
The Wisconsin Supper Club That Crossed State Lines
The original Turk’s Inn opened in 1934 in Hayward, Wisconsin. It was a genuine Upper Midwest supper club — the kind of place where you ordered a fish fry, drank an old fashioned, and stayed all night because there was nowhere better to be. For eighty years it operated, accumulating tchotchkes, legends, and a loyal local following.
When the Wisconsin original closed in 2015, two devoted regulars named Russ and Lexy Kauffman made a decision that defies rational explanation: they loaded everything — the taxidermy, the paintings, the bar fixtures, the portrait of George, the entire physical atmosphere of the place — into a truck and drove it to Brooklyn. They found a space on Starr Street in Bushwick, rebuilt the supper club from scratch, added a full Turkish-inspired dinner menu, and opened in 2019.
The result is one of those places that you cannot adequately describe to someone who hasn’t been. You have to walk in, stop, and let it wash over you.
The Room
Walking into Turk’s Inn feels like entering a different era and a different country simultaneously. The crimson walls are hung so densely with objects — mounted animal heads, vintage photographs, framed postcards, folk art, clocks — that it takes several minutes before your eyes settle. The lighting is low and amber. Mismatched chairs and booths surround tables with white tablecloths. The bar is long, polished, and serious.
The cocktails lean Ottoman: spiced riffs on classics, drinks built around pomegranate and cardamom and rosewater. The food is Turkish-leaning comfort — lamb dishes, mezze, doner kebab from the counter out back. But it’s the atmosphere that does the real work here. Turk’s Inn has what most bars spend decades trying to manufacture: genuine, accumulated soul.
The Sultan Room: Where the Night Goes Deep
Through a back door lies The Sultan Room, a separate music venue that has become one of the most beloved small stages in Brooklyn. With a capacity that keeps it intimate and a booking philosophy that spans indie rock, DJ sets, dance nights, and everything in between, it oscillates effortlessly between listening room and dance club — a rare combination in a city full of spaces that can only do one thing.
The venue’s weekly programming has developed its own rhythm: Tuesday nights bring rock-and-roll vinyl DJs, Wednesdays are Industry Night with drink specials, and Thursday through Saturday the space transforms into whatever the night demands — sometimes a sweaty dance party, sometimes a quiet show where everyone’s sitting on the floor. On the roof above it all, the Sultan Room Rooftop opens in summer, adding skyline views to the mix.
Out front, the Döner Kebab counter serves late into the night — because the best after-show move in Bushwick is a proper kebab at midnight, and Turk’s Inn knows it.
Why It Works
In a neighborhood famous for nightlife, Turk’s Inn manages to feel apart from it. Bushwick has bars that are louder, clubs that are larger, rooftops with better views. But almost nothing else in the borough has this specific combination: a restaurant with genuine culinary identity, a bar that rewards slow drinking, a music venue that books well, a late-night food counter, and a rooftop — all in one building, all running simultaneously, all coherent with each other.
The crowd reflects that coherence: it’s mixed in age, eclectic in dress code, and deeply local. You’ll see the same faces week after week, which is the highest compliment a bar can earn.
If you’ve been making your way through Rudy’s in Hell’s Kitchen and Cellar Dog in the West Village, Turk’s Inn is the Brooklyn bookend — a place that earns its late hours.
How to Visit
Address: 234 Starr Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY 11237
Nearest subway: L train to Jefferson Street (10-minute walk) or L/M to Myrtle-Wyckoff (8-minute walk)
Dinner hours: Wednesday–Thursday 6pm–11pm; Friday–Saturday 6pm–midnight; Sunday 6pm–11pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday.
The Sultan Room: Check thesultanroom.com for show schedules — most events run until 2 AM on weekends
Reservations: Recommended for dinner via Resy; walk-ins welcome at the bar
Cost: No cover for the bar area; Sultan Room shows vary ($15–$25 typical)
Insider Tip: Skip the dining room on your first visit and sit at the bar. The bartenders know the history of every object on those walls and will tell you about it if you ask. Also: the doner kebab counter out back stays open late even when the kitchen closes — it’s the best-kept secret in a building full of them.
New York has hundreds of bars. Very few of them were physically disassembled in Wisconsin and reassembled in Brooklyn because someone loved them too much to let them disappear. That story alone is worth the trip out to Bushwick. The fact that the bar itself is extraordinary is almost beside the point.
Making a night of it in Brooklyn? Check the Bushwick mural map first — then end the night at Starr Street.
