Like Ingas, the new restaurant takes over a corner space.
Photo: Courtesy of Lonnies
Sean Rembold and Caron Callahan, the married couple who run Ingas Bar in Brooklyn Heights, are very deliberate when they name things. Perhaps overly so: A week after the birth of each of their children, the hospital called demanding they finally give their babies names. “We’re perfectionists,” Rembold explains. “We work together and want each other to be happy,” Ingas, which they opened four years ago, is named for Rembold’s great-aunt from Louisville; it was the only name they could come up with. This time, when faced with opening a new restaurant a couple of neighborhoods south, they faced the same challenge. “Needless to say, names don’t come easy — and we didn’t want a b.s. name,” Rembold says. This Wednesday, May 20, they’ll officially open Lonnies (which, like Ingas, is styled sans apostrophe).
Lonnie Lanham was a significant, near-mystical figure during Rembold’s early life in Kentucky. The real Lonnie was the dad of Rembold’s friend, a Vietnam vet turned hairdresser, and, Rembold says, the most free-spirited and sophisticated person he’d ever met. “We’d go to Lonnie’s to chill out, do what we wanted to do — it represented complete freedom.”
The goal is to extend that same sense of freedom to the menu, to feature whatever’s fresh and fun. Ingas opened in winter, so Lonnies already has the advantage of debuting in the spring, when actual produce is growing. “We have peas, vegetables — it’s much easier,” Callahan says. The menu is “lo-fi, easy, and approachable,” Rembold says. The only restriction for him and his executive chef, Eddie Acosta: no gas, but luckily Rembold can reminisce and maybe even revisit some preparations from his induction-range-only days cooking at Marlow & Sons.
Lonnies will celebrate local ingredients, but it will also serve a low-key prime rib, served every day with minimal garnish that will be, surprisingly, a value play when compared to the high-grade porterhouses around town. Rembold’s culinary sensibilities lean classic, or what he describes as “classy, fewer ingredients, not more. Not to a monastic degree.” He’s also reviving chicken under a brick from his repertoire — a spatchcocked bird cooked in a cast iron that he’s carried with them through his career — and, necessarily, a burger, with beef coming from Paisano’s butcher a few blocks away. Callahan, for her part, is most excited about dessert: “a creamy Basque cheesecake!”
Callahan says the goal for the design is to match the menu: “Nothing’s overly designed, like Sean’s food.” In converting the former Café Kitsuné, Callahan took some inspiration from the kinds of diners she frequents during kids’ soccer trips — “we treat ourselves to a giant slice of pie in a cozy booth” — while giving it an Art Deco makeover. Two-seater, freestanding banquets Callahan calls “sweeties” will anchor the space, with rectangular cream-colored tiles leading guests into striped and stained Scandinavian-ish wooden floors. She found vintage lights from the Czech Republic that glow streetlamp yellow, not LED cream, and bleed into the cherry-red branding, which shows up on menus and in other innate details throughout the restaurant. There will be half a dozen seats at the bespoke bar in back, available via reservation. “We always want to sit at the bar,” Callahan says, “and this one is more intimate, no people standing behind you.” Up front, there’s a separate chrome-banded bar topped with honeyed marble. This will be open for walk-ins.
One spot that’s a noticeable upgrade from Ingas is acoustics (that’s mostly due to the tin ceilings in Ingas). The playlist includes Bill Callahan (no relation) and the National — a natural thematic match with Nan Goldin’s stark, unflinching photograph on the wall, and a mix that should make the neighborhood dads feel right at home.
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