Brooklyn Heights Favorite Ingas Bar Expanding to Boerum Hill

The bar at Ingas in Brooklyn Heights.
Photo: Michael Harlan Turkell

In early 2022, wife-and-husband restaurateurs Caron Callahan and Sean Rembold opened Ingas Bar in a residential nook of Brooklyn Heights. Very quickly, it became a neighborhood staple, its candlelit coziness making it ideal for date nights, with families piling in for brunch during the daytime hours. Now, those good vibes will extend to another neighborhood — Boerum Hill — as the couple has taken over the corner space previously inhabited by Café Kitsuné.

“We were not actively looking for a space,” says Rembold. Other real-estate opportunities had come up, but he and Callahan wanted to be “picky and choosy” as to when and where they’d land next. This space, on the corner of Bond and Pacific, just felt right. “We’ve told ourselves this is Ingas’s older sister,” Rembold says. There’s no name yet, and everything is still in planning stages, but overlap with Ingas’s gastrotavern cooking should be minimal. (It’s worth noting that Rembold worked for Andrew Tarlow at Diner and Marlow & Sons, companion restaurants that shared a sensibility but little else.)

The couple and their two children live in the neighborhood, and Rembold says locals will ultimately dictate the final form. “If we’re not focused on the regulars, it’s not for us. The vibe, feel, and staff come before the food,” he says, pointing out that the new place should lend itself to any life scenario: “celebration, knocking off work, family in town from out of town, after-school pickup, or just ’cause.”

One big reason the couple wanted to expand was out of consideration for their employees. “We wanted upward mobility for our staff,” Rembold says. “We’re lucky to have low turnover at Ingas — they’re our true impetus for creative growth.”

The couple is tentatively eyeing late winter or early spring for an opening date, and the look of the space is a ways off, but Rembold says that Callahan, a designer, loves small, unique spaces with corners that offer more natural light. She’ll be the one to visualize the décor, from custom napkins to the candle scent in the bathroom. There’s also an attached bar next door on Bond, which will be a later project. (Ingas has its own private dining room with its own entrance.) The news has already started to make its way around the neighborhood, and for the people who live nearby, the restaurant’s arrival likely can’t come soon enough.

The Caesar-esque celery Victor, a signature at Ingas.
Photo: Michael Harlan Turkell