Our story
One family, one fire, since 1994.
Turnspit is the oldest of the Merrow family's three rooms. This is how one rotisserie on Gristmill Row became three, and what has not changed on the way.
Paul and Marian Merrow opened Turnspit in Huntington in 1994 with one rotisserie and eleven tables. Their daughter Ada grew up at the pass, left at nineteen, and cooked for eleven years in other people's kitchens. She came home in 2025. Sable Room opened the next spring in the old watchmaker's shop on Tallow Lane, and Seventeen Jewels took the shop's front room that autumn.
The years
Thirty-two years in seven stops.
From eleven tables to three rooms, a van, and two more doors on Tallow Lane.
1994
Turnspit opens
Paul and Marian Merrow open Turnspit on Gristmill Row with one wood-fired rotisserie, eleven tables and a chalkboard. Half a chicken, potatoes from the drip tray, bread from the hearth.
The menu fit on one chalkboard. Most of it still would.
2006
A second rotisserie, in Northport
The Northport room opens a block from the harbor. Sunday supper for the table starts here and spreads to the other rooms.
Marian wanted a deck. Paul wanted a second fire. Both got built.
2012
The catering van
A customer asks for forty chickens for a wedding. Turnspit says yes, buys a van, and has catered every weekend since.
Cal Okafor has driven it, or its replacement, every weekend since.
2018
Greenport
The third Turnspit opens in a former chandlery by the Greenport ferry, close enough to the North Fork farms that the salad is picked that morning.
The first room where the salad beats the chicken to the table.
2025
Ada comes home
After eleven years in other kitchens, the last four on a wood-fired line in Manhattan, Ada Merrow takes the lease on 14 Tallow Lane.
She learned to carve at our pass, standing on a milk crate.
2026
Sable Room
Sable Room opens in March in the back of the old shop: one counter cut from a single black walnut, one hearth, one menu a night. It seated sixteen on opening night and twelve from the second.
Visit Sable Room2026
Seventeen Jewels
In September the front room opens as a wine bar, cheese counter and bottle shop. It is named for the seventeen jewels in the movement of a good mechanical watch. The regulator clock still keeps the time.
Visit Seventeen Jewels
The first rotisserie
Still on the wall. Still turning.
Paul Merrow built it himself in 1994: black iron, one crank, a drip tray underneath. It is in the Huntington room today, cooking lunch.
He drew it on the back of a bread order and had the frame welded in a boatyard. The spit runs off a motor now; the crank is still there for power cuts, and for children who ask nicely. When the Northport and Greenport rooms opened, their rotisseries were built from the same drawing.
See the Huntington room
What has not changed
Five things we left alone.
Most of running a restaurant for thirty years is deciding what not to touch.
The brine
Every bird sits overnight in salt, lemon and thyme. Nobody has found a shortcut worth taking.
The wood
Oak in the morning for heat, cherry before service for the smell. It is written on the wall by the log pile.
The potatoes
Under the spit, in the tray, catching everything. Paul's idea, and the reason people come back.
The bread
Marian's loaf. One recipe since 1994, baked in the hearth every morning and out by 11.
The gravy
Made from the drippings before the doors open. Paul still tastes it, every day, in all three rooms by turns.
The people
Four names you will hear across the pass.
Two founders, the daughter who came home, and the man who runs the kitchens.
Ada Merrow
Chef and owner
Cooks at Sable Room five nights a week and writes the Turnspit specials on Mondays.
Paul Merrow
Founder, Turnspit
Built the first rotisserie himself in 1994. Still tastes the gravy every morning.
Marian Merrow
Founder, Turnspit
Ran the floor for twenty-six years. The bread recipe is hers.
Cal Okafor
Kitchen lead, Turnspit
Runs the three Turnspit kitchens and the catering van.
The two newer rooms
What Ada built next.
Both are at 14 Tallow Lane in Huntington, ten minutes on foot from our first door. One gift card works in all three rooms.