What’s on Your Plate?

Martha’s Leelanau Table and Farm Club talk ingredients and recipes for summer cooking

By Greg Tasker | July 22, 2023

Summer on the Leelanau Peninsula means many things, but for restaurants like Martha’s Leelanau Table in Suttons Bay and Farm Club, tucked along a rural stretch of a county road outside Traverse City, it’s the bounty of the season. Orchards and farms dot the rolling, bucolic landscape, making the route from farm-to-table short for restaurateurs. Summer on the Leelanau Peninsula means many things, but for restaurants like Martha’s Leelanau Table in Suttons Bay and Farm Club, tucked along a rural stretch of a county road outside Traverse City, it’s the bounty of the season. Orchards and farms dot the rolling, bucolic landscape, making the route from farm-to-table short for restaurateurs. 

Martha Ryan and her son, Matthew, the creative chefs behind Martha’s Leelanau Table, tap local farms for a variety of vegetables and fruit and source fresh and smoked fish from Carlson’s in Leland.

For the business partners behind the popular Farm Club, much of that bounty is closer—literally steps away. Vegetable, flower, and herb gardens and orchards are planted on the grounds. That’s why Gary Jonas and Nic Theisen bill their eatery as a restaurant on a farm.

We stopped by the two restaurants this month and asked them to share some of their summer dishes using seasonal fare.

Martha’s Leelanau Table

Long a staple of Leelanau County’s dining scene, Martha’s Leelanau Table is located in a renovated century-old farmhouse on the main drag through Suttons Bay. The European-style bistro is the culmination of Martha’s years of service in the county’s restaurant industry and as food service director for Leland schools for two decades. Matthew came aboard full-time several years ago after trying his hand with other food purveyors in Michigan and elsewhere.

While local ingredients don’t always dominate summer dishes, the Ryans strive to use local produce and products as much as possible. Fresh asparagus from nearby Empire is common during that short growing season. They use locally grown tomatoes, and fresh rhubarb and strawberries (the latter of which come from Bardenhagen Berries) are used seasonally as well, tapped this summer for a homemade rhubarb-strawberry pudding. 

“We do the best we can to buy local and incorporate those ingredients into our recipes,” says Matthew, who serves as head chef. “The growing season is short—only from June to September—but we really try to do the best we can.”

Dish No. 1: Leelanau Cassoulet

Matthew created this popular summer dish after stumbling upon a recipe for kale, beans, and sausage. He substituted the pork sausage for venison sausage, purchasing from a meat specialty shop east of Cadillac. He kicks this variation of the famous French dish up a notch by topping the cassoulet with seared duck breast (seasoned and sauteed ahead of time). 

In his preparation, Matthew browns the sausage before adding garlic and sautéing for 30 seconds. He then adds Cannellini beans and chopped kale from a local farm. Chicken stock, cream, thyme, and lemon are stirred in, simmering for 20 minutes until the sauce thickens. He sprinkles with parmesan cheese before topping with the duck breast.

“It’s almost like making a soup, but we thicken it more,” he says. “It’s not really a traditional cassoulet. It’s more of a variation, but we added a romantic name to it.”

Dish No. 2: Beef Short Ribs

This recipe was inspired by a recent vacation in Spain (Martha hosts international trips every year), where Matthew became enamored of beef cheeks, frequently served as tapas. Back home, he substitutes beef ribs for the beef cheeks.
In his preparation, Matthew trims the fat from the ribs, seasons with his own barbecue rub (which includes smoked paprika), and sears on both sides. He places the meat in a half hotel pan, pours a can and a half of Coke over the ribs, covers with aluminum foil, and roasts in the oven at 275 degrees for six hours.
The ribs are served over buttermilk mashed potatoes—which are purchased from a Leelanau County farm—with a side of mixed vegetables, including onions, red bell peppers, zucchini, squash and carrots.

Farm Club 

Opened during the summer of 2020, Farm Club became an immediate success, not only because people wanted to be outside, but because of its contemporary, open-air setting amid Leelanau’s rolling hills. 

This restaurant, brewery, farm, and marketplace is a collaboration between Gary and Allison Jonas, owners of Little Fleet in Traverse City, and Nic and Sara Theisen, the couple behind Leelanau’s well-known Loma Farm. The grounds include 2.5 acres of vegetables, herbs, flowers, and apples. 

Farm Club does buy grain and beans from other small farms and outsources olive oil and lemons, for instance. 
“We want to eat off our farm year-round, as much as we can,” Theisen says. “We’re not purists. We do buy other things. We don’t want to burn more fuel or use more light [to grow produce]. We’re not here for the sake of austerity. It’s a more sustainable and more enjoyable way to farm and to eat.”

Dish No. 1: Blackened Zucchini Sandwich

This sandwich begins, as you might suspect, with zucchini fresh from Farm Club’s gardens.  Created by Chef Dan Compton, the sandwich highlights not only the eatery’s farm but also its bakery and mill. (Farm Club mills all of its whole grains, all sourced from Michigan and the Great Lakes.)

Compton dusts thin slices of zucchini with blackening spices and quickly sears on the griddle before assembling the sandwich. The hearty sandwich includes a basil mayo, mozzarella, bread and butter pickles, greens, and multi-grain bread. 

All vegetable components are grown on the premises. The mayo is homemade. The pickles are seasoned in-house. The mozzarella comes from a farm in Wisconsin. The grain is milled in-house and the bread, of course, baked on the premises.

“I like the idea of serving summer bounty when we have it available,” Compton says. “Having a vegetarian sandwich with something we grow here is natural. I wanted to create something a little heartier that we could serve to carnivores. That’s where the idea of blackening came in…it makes it more savory, closer to meat.”

Says Jonas, “This recipe says a lot about what we do. We take a simple ingredient, and you don’t have to do much to it. It’s simple food.”

Dish No. 2: Caesar Salad

The main ingredient in this classic salad is kale, grown in the nearby garden. Unlike other greens, kale does not wither and die in the winter—it sleeps and remains edible, Theisen says—making it available to the Farm Club kitchen throughout the year.

Compton makes his own Caesar dressing using anchovies (you can’t do justice to the dressing without anchovies, he says) and parmesan. Croutons are made from Farm Club’s bread. What sets this salad apart are the preserved lemons. Compton packs lemon peel and rind in salt and sugar to cure. The cured product is finely diced and tossed into the salad.

“You end up with this delicious deep, rich lemony condiment that can be used in all kinds of dishes. It adds a brightness to the salad,” he says. 

Dish No. 3: The Farm Board

The Farm Board (pictured), a showcase for the vegetables grown on the farm, as well as homemade ingredients, has been a staple since the eatery opened. 

On the board now are fresh baby bok choy, sugar snap peas, hakurei turnips, and sweet cherries. There’s always something pickled in-house plus the go-to homemade bread. A cooked vegetable adds texture to the mix. Lastly, there are always rotating dips made from vegetables, beans, and cream from local dairy farms. 

“The idea behind the board is to showcase whatever we have, which is always rotating,” Jonas says. “Recently, we featured currants for five days. It was an interesting thing to feature. We’re sharing produce in its prime. We picked the sugar snap peas this morning to go on the board.”

Steal These Recipes

Matthew Ryan from Martha’s Leelanau Table shared a few extra recipes with us to improve your grill game. We recommend adding them to your repertoire ASAP.

Dry Rub

½ cup chili powder
½ cup kosher salt
¼ cup granulated garlic
¼ cup granulated onion
¼ cup black pepper
¼ cup sugar
2 tbsp dry mustard
¼ cup smoked paprika
¼ cup cumin

Barbecue Sauce

3 cups ketchup
½ cup apple cider vinegar
½ cup Worcestershire sauce
1 ½ cups brown sugar
¼ cup yellow mustard
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp smoked paprika
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp garlic powder
2 pinches salt
2 pinches pepper
½ cup water