This 20-Year-Old Traverse City Restaurant Set the Stage for a Northern Michigan Food Movement #DetroitFood

To the left, chef Myles Anton and sommelier Amanda Danielson from late 2023. | Courtney Kent Photography

This stalwart destination for Italian food and wine helped to put Northern Michigan restaurants on the map

Co-owner and sommelier Amanda Danielson remembers when she first set foot inside the space that would become Trattoria Stella. “It looked like it had been bombed out,” she says of the onetime state hospital developed by Ray Minervini where the restaurant is located, now known as Grand Traverse Commons. “I remember Ray and his sister, Minnie, walking us down there and we saw the arches and were like, ‘oh my God,’” she remembers.

Twenty years later, those arches remain one of the most beloved fixtures of the restaurant’s cavernous and romantic space — as does the food, wine, and hospitality that’s come to define Trattoria Stella as a foundational restaurant in Northern Michigan’s farm-to-table movement.

Courtney Kent Photography

Courtney Kent Photography

Courtney Kent Photography

Courtney Kent Photography

The crew from Trattoria Stella posing for photos in late 2023.

In June, Stella hosted a wine dinner with Piedmontese winemaker Giorgio Rivetti. Danielson and her team worked with Oregon and Michigan winemaker Thomas Houseman to bottle an anniversary sparkling wine called “Through the Sextant,” which can be purchased at northern Michigan wine shops and found on select wine lists in Detroit. Danielson and co-owner and executive chef Myles Anton, hosted an anniversary picnic earlier this month that benefited numerous community non-profits and featured a whole roasted pig with sauces such as spicy Calabrian vinaigrette, cavatappi pasta salad, and locally grown strawberry shortcake. Winemaker Dave Bos, who was on the opening team at Stella before he dedicated his career to winemaking, volunteered at the event. “It was so much fun,” Bos says of the picnic. “Truly a special way to give back to the community.”

The summertime festivities served to punctuate Trattoria Stella’s decades-long commitment to working with as many local farms as possible — something that feels so commonplace today that it is hard to remember the era where it wasn’t the norm. “Back then, you really didn’t see that kind of partnership between farms and restaurants up here,” Danielson says.

“We wanted to highlight the food that’s available here, the wine,” Anton adds.

Sonja Daniels-Moehle (SDEDM)

Trattoria Stella

Sonja Daniels-Moehle (SDEDM)

Trattoria Stella

General manager, Abigail Steffens-Petrova, who has been with Trattoria Stella since 2005, holding a bottle of anniversary sparkling wine called “Though the Sextant” made to mark Trattoria Stella’s 20 years in operation.

Sonja Daniels-Moehle (SDEDM)

The menu, which has changed daily since the restaurant’s inception, has long included tomatoes from “Heirloom Craig,” a farmer in the Village of Kaleva in Manistee County, who every year, starts tomato plants for Stella in the yurt he lives in. Werp Farms’ Mike Werp of Buckley Township a bit south of Traverse City grows sylvetta arugula for Anton. Jen Bramer has been planting celery on Old Mission Peninsula at her Local Yokels Farm for Stella for more than a decade.

While relationships with farmers were Anton’s first order of business after opening, the chef ultimately started making pasta in house and butchering whole animals during the nation’s nose-to-tail craze. In 2010, Anton nabbed a spot on the list of semifinalists for the James Beard Awards in the Best Chef Great Lakes category, along with fellow Northern Michigan chefs Randy Chamberlain of Blu in Glen Arbor and Guillaume Hazaël-Massieux of La Bécasse in Maple City. Anton earned that distinction another four times through 2015. And yet, he is quick to celebrate the collective power of his early peers. “We were all really young and hungry and wanted to push the ball forward,” remembers Anton. “We were a part of a group of people that really got TC on the map with food and wine and I’m really proud that I was part of that,” he says.

Over the past 20 years, Danielson (who at the beginning of her career trained under master sommelier Madeline Triffon) has been as committed to Stella’s wine program as Anton has been to the food. The restaurant has long had one of the most exciting wine books in the state, especially for Italian oenophiles, but her early commitment to making sure certain Michigan growers and winemakers were a part of the wine program was noteworthy as well. “I didn’t have wines on my list that I wouldn’t drink myself,” Danielson says. Today, the list is a testament to how the state’s wine culture has grown. “The difference between then and now is there might have been like three or four [Michigan wines]. Now, I have to rotate them in because there’s too many to choose from.”

One of Stella’s most telling indicators of success, however, might just be staff retention. Many of Stella’s employees have been with the restaurant for a stretch of time that is almost unheard of in the restaurant world. The current business manager, Sarah Bielman, has worked with Danielson and Anton since opening year. The restaurant’s general manager, Abigail Steffens-Petrova, has been there since 2005, and Anton’s chef de cuisine, Elise Curtis-Dull, is celebrating her 17th year. “They’ve just dedicated themselves to this place,” says Anton. “It’s amazing.” During the early days of the pandemic, Danielson and Anton gave employees a lot of voice in the business operations, opening the door to improved work-life balance for workers. Twenty years ago, the restaurant was open for lunch and dinner seven days a week. That’s since shifted out of respect for the needs of employees. In addition, over the last year and a half, Danielson has been working to improve staff benefits — adding a wellness program, improved medical insurance, and a retirement program. Danielson is also giving back to others beyond the restaurant. She recently founded Dirt to Glass, a two-day conference for Midwestern grape growers and wine producers hosted in partnership with Michigan State University; and is working to build a teaching vineyard on Old Mission Peninsula. “It’s an opportunity, in a notoriously difficult industry, to leave it better than you found it,” Danielson says of both initiatives.

Among Trattoria Stella’s supporters is Brad Greenhill of Detroit’s Takoi and Ann Arbor’s Speido, who worked under Anton in Ann Arbor in the late ’90s, before Anton relocated to Traverse City. “Twenty years is a lifetime in the restaurant world,” says Greenhill. “It’s a testament to chef Myles and Amanda’s hard work and dedication to hospitality and culinary excellence that has made Stella an iconic restaurant not only in the Traverse City area, but the state of Michigan.”

Danielson echoes this sentiment.

“Twenty years is a privilege,” Trattoria Stella’s Danielson says. “We feel very fortunate to have been able to serve the community successfully and authentically.”

Stacey Nield Brugeman is a Traverse City-based food and travel journalist and regular contributor to Eater Detroit. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Food & Wine, Saveur, Travel + Leisure, and Midwest Living.

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