Nittolo’s Pizza & Nittolo’s Seafood and Social Double the dining options in one Lake Leelanau location
By Ross Boissoneau Think of Chef Eric Nittolo’s latest restaurant as a family affair. And not just because multiple members of his family are on staff. He believes it’s important to treat the customers as family, to the point of allowing — even encouraging them — to take their time and stick around for a while. Nittolo and his crew are focusing on the customers’ experience, working to make people feel welcome and eager to return (and eager to tell their friends), rather than turning as many tables as possible. He hopes patrons linger over dinner and retire to the landscaped patio following dinner, where they can enjoy dessert or another bottle of wine. Judging by the number of diners on the patio and inside the restaurant on a recent evening, his hope looks to be reality just months after opening Nittolo’s Seafood and Social in April. (Nittolo’s Pizza opened first, in March. Both share the same restaurant space; the menu simply transitions to
the Seafood and Social offerings, with reservations required, beginning at 5pm Thursdays through Sundays.) “We’ve become a destination,” says Nittolo proudly. THE MENU A key part of the unhurried experience he works to deliver is, of course, a diner’s reason for being there: the food. Nittolo’s cooking philosophy is likewise relaxed; to showcase the fish and beef, he says he uses sauces and accompaniments only to complement the proteins rather than overwhelm them. He can, he says, because he sources the same quality fish and beef he was exposed to while growing on the East Coast. “We have the best protein, line-caught halibut, beef from Japan, Bluefin tuna, mussels. We want to produce the best food possible,” he said. The current starter’s menu, for instance, includes oysters two ways — accompanied with a Blood Orange Mignonette or served Rockefeller style, with creamed spinach,
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crumbs, bacon, and asiago. The Baltimore Crab Cakes, featuring blue crab, bring East Coast essential Old Bay to the fore with Old Bay Kettle Corn and tabasco mayo. The escargot is served with sambuca and garlic parsley butter, and there’s even Beef Carpaccio and Tartare. Salads include a cherry with greens, fennel, brie, nectarine, cinnamon oats, and honey hazelnut vinaigrette. Or try the morel bisque with morels, portobellos, whiskey cream, and truffles. Among the entrees are Chilean Sea Bass with yam, morel risotto, oxtail, saffron vermouth cream; Ora King Salmon with beets, cucumbers, morel risotto, orange creme fraiche; and American and Japanese Wagyu beef. In addition to sourcing internationally, Nittolo pays homage to local suppliers, securing much of his produce from area farmers and working with the likes of Cheboygan Brewing and Gypsy Vodka for alcoholic beverages. The extensive wine list reflects the same duality, featuring numerous
bottles from Italy, Napa, and the Sonoma Valley; sparkling wine from Leelanau County alongside champagne from France; and by-the-glass pours and house bottles from France, Italy, Australia, Spain, and of course, the restaurant’s backyard again, Leelanau. CHEF’S CUT If the menu is enticing, Nittolo’s personal story is no less so. While he boasts an extensive restaurant background, he’s not one of those who worked his way up from dishwasher to server to restaurateur. He graduated from Ferris State University with a degree in, of all things, analytic chemistry. He entered the food industry through a side door, working for Graceland Fruit, where he discovered he had a talent for flavor profiling. He was soon recruited to Kroger — in the fluid milk division — but within a year, he had changed direction again, buying Carp River Trading Company, a retail and wholesale specialty food producer that supplied products to retailers like northern
