Tratorria Stella in Traverse City is probably best known as being in the basement of a old state mental hospital. The impressive building has been reworked as the Village at Grand Traverse Commons. Once housing the mentally “insane” the 13,000 sq. foot building went through a $2.3M restoration and now houses restaurants, shops, business offices and even a bakery.
Tratorria Stella is considered one of the top Italian restaurants in the area. Despite its warm old world feel, cozy rooms, brick work, archways and hallways you can still imagine the hospital and feel the history in the building. It is rather eerie, dining in the dark subterranean rooms.
On a business trip, my associates and myself, along with a few guests, decided this would be the perfect place for an evenings adventure. Upon our arrival, we were overwhelmed with the expansive building, which looked rather ominous, looking right out of a horror movie, yet the intricate details of the construction, was breathtaking. The staff greeted us and we were sat at our table right away. Nestled deep in a corner of a backroom, the ambiance was both warm and chilling at the same time. There was definitely a chill in the air. Was is the cold stone walls, and the fact we were below ground level, or the years of spirits that undoubtedly still roam the halls? We ordered some cocktails and perused the extensive, eclectic menu. The chef prides himself and his food as being prepared with local ingredients, changing the menu and adjusting as necessary based on the current crops and growth seasons. With a butcher on staff, they also pride themselves with using all parts of the animal, minimizing unnecessary waste.
We started with a couple appetizers, roasted chestnuts and Aranchini, focaccia dusted & fried, acorn squash & bel paese cheese rice balls, panelle, fra diavolo. Which is basically cheesy fried rice balls. They were very good, but make sure your order enough. With six of us, we needed two as each appetizer only had 3 rice balls. They were rich and cheesy and one was large enough to be quite satisfying. The chestnuts were interesting. After years of hearing about them roasting by a fire, I finally had the opportunity to try them. Let’s just say they were NOT worth the wait. Turns out Chestnuts are rather weird and bitter. Not a fan.
My coworker Carolyn and I were having some problems deciding. Honestly, this is not your typical Italian restaurant, with cheesy lasagna’s, spaghetti and meatballs or ravioli. It is a virtual cornucopia of unusual ingredients including bone marrow, blood sausage, venison and duck. We split a couple salads, which actually turned out to be quite small. The waitress was kind enough to split our salads onto separate plates for us, but the salads were small and underwhelming.
For dinner, we opted to split a couple dishes. Chicken Saltimbocca, which the menu describes as: pan-seared organic chicken breast, Prosciutto di Parma ham & Fontina Fontal cheese stuffing, gnocchetti, shiitake mushrooms, torn sage, smoked tomato & Marsala. The dish lived up to its name. Salt-imbocca. Very salty. The chicken was a top what they call “gnocchetti”, which seems essentially like gnocchi dough, rolled out flat and cut into random square pieces. If you did not know what it was, you would be hard pressed to figure it out. Doughy and chewy, you could place it as pasta. I didn’t enjoy the dish. It was way to salty for my taste.
The second dish we split is no longer on the menu. A spaghetti with a rich merlot sauce and eggplant. The pasta, obviously handmade again seemed a bit chewy and doughy. The sauce again was salty, and the eggplant had hard pieces of skin, which was inedible. It was rather disconcerting, to say the least. Again, not a fan of this dish.
Others at the table ordered the scallops, described as: Scallops caramelized, basil pesto risotto, broccoli florets, Romanesco cauliflower, lemon zest, flatleaf parsley. I was told that this dish too, was extremely salty.
After splitting a few desserts, and an after dinner coffee, we left our “insane” dinner and headed back to the hotel. Overall my impression of this restaurant was the hype drives the popularity of this restaurant and people are told it is supposed to be “gourmet” so they assume that the food must be good, and if they don’t like it, then they must be the problem. I would not return to this restaurant. I am not one of the masses that think it must be delicious because I am told it is supposed to be. Very cool ambiance and amazing building, that much is true. The food though? I thought overhyped and over salted.