Nittolos eat Italy and Spain, bring tapas home

, ,

When Eric Nittolo, owner of Nittolo’s Seafood & Pizza in Lake Leelanau, travels to Europe, he brings a family entourage and they eat like royalty, night after night. With each plate, in each city, Eric challenges himself to learn something new, to bring culinary lessons home to Lake Leelanau. Every night on his trips to Italy, Spain and the Baltic countries, Eric took mental notes on how he could incorporate these culinary lessons back home. Now at Nittolo’s you can order a Tuscan wild boar pizza served with smoked mozzarella. And on May 17, a Spanish Tapas lounge will open at Nittolo’s.

Read more
/by

New business Peninsula Provisions brings fine wine, goods to Lake Leelanau

,

Peninsula Provisions, located in the old Samaritan’s Closet Building in Lake Leelanau, is thrilled to announce their projected opening in June 2023. Owner and proprietor Kate Vilter Stassen, formerly of The Riverside Inn in Leland, and husband Coenraad Stassen, Brys Estate director of Winemaking and Estate manager have always been passionate about wine and food. It was Kate, however, who knew even before the sale of the Riverside in 2021 that owning and operating a wine and provisions shop was the next step in her career.

Read more
/by

French Valley Vineyard hosts ice wine picking event

,

French Valley Vineyard, located at 3655 South French Road near Cedar, will host an ice wine picking event for the public on Jan. 31 at 10 a.m. During the event, attendees can join vineyard manager Tomas Moreno and senior winemaker Blake Lougheed in the harvest of riesling grapes for ice wine production. 

Read more
/by

Second-generation farmhand delivers grapes, workers, tortillas

, ,

Consider Tomas Moreno a matchmaker for Leelanau County’s migrant farmworkers. The soft-spoken, good-natured Texas native and Leland Public School graduate with family roots in Mexico manages 54 vineyard acres north of Lake Leelanau for Bel Lago and French Valley wineries. He interprets for and leads a crew of Hispanic farm workers, indispensable to the harvest, some of whom arrive in northern Michigan on H-2A temporary work visas. Tomas, who turns 41 next month, also recently began making fresh tortillas with his wife Julieta to sell to the local Latino community.

Read more
/by

Four Spaniards, 9 Bean Rows, and one giant clay oven

,

Sometime in late August, Jen and Nic Welty, who own 9 Bean Rows bakery on M-204 between Lake Leelanau and Suttons Bay, will use their new, state-of-the-art, wood-fired clay convection oven for the first time. The oven, which measures 12 feet in diameter, occupies 144 square feet, weighs 70,000 pounds, and emits exceptional radiant heat, was built on-site by a team of four Barcelonians during one week in mid-July.

Read more
/by

Supporting mental health on the farm

,

“Growing up on a farm was a wonderful experience. I was surrounded by nature and family,” said Remington Rice, a Benzie County native who represents the fifth generation to grow up on the same family farm in rural Michigan. “Of course, not everything was perfect. The men in the family didn’t really talk about stress or how they were doing. I never heard my grandpa say he was stressed or sad; you just kept working and didn’t talk about it. I think there was this belief that if you don’t acknowledge it, then it’ll go away on its own.” Rice joined Michigan State University (MSU) Extension as a health and farm stress educator in August 2021.

Read more
/by

Grocers Daughter Chocolate’s long-awaited gelateria opens in Empire

, ,

If Jody and DC Hayden, owners of Grocers Daughter Chocolate, didn’t already win you over with their high-quality dark chocolate truffles, sumptuous cookies, or perfect-on-a-summer-day fudgsicles, you’ll almost certainly submit to their smooth and creamy gelato. In fact, don’t even try to resist. The Haydens will officially open their long-awaited gelateria next to the chocolate shop on M-22 in downtown Empire on Saturday, July 23.

Read more
/by

Nittolo’s: Pizzeria, fine dining, and now an exclusive club as well

, ,

Eric Nittolo is continually upping the ante. Not satisfied with a trendy pizzeria, he added a fine dining option to his Lake Leelanau establishment—though to be fair, that was always the plan. Nittolo’s Pizza and Nittolo’s Seafood and Social quickly became hits. But he had another idea up his sleeve. He added Nittolo’s Powerhouse Speakeasy to the mix, and the members-only jazz club has quickly established itself as another success.

Read more
/by

Goats feast at Port Oneida

,

The 20 goats had moved into Dechow Farm in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore’s Port Oneida Rural Historic District just a few hours before, and already YouthWork director Bill Watson was laying in the grass near the goat pen and cuddling a couple kids who approached him. “He was a puddle,” said Amy McIntyre, co-owner of Pontiac-based City Girls Farm, which brought the livestock to Leelanau County on June 11 to graze in the fields and remove invasive species through the summer. This is the first year that Sleeping Bear Dunes officials embraced livestock grazing on Park land for a full season.

Read more
/by

Bardenhagen Berries Farm celebrates sesquicentennial and strawberry season

, ,

Bardenhagen Berries Farm celebrates its 150th anniversary as a family farm this year by commemorating its rich history and continuing to diversify for its future. While the farm offers a variety of crops, it is perhaps best known for strawberries.

Read more
/by