The new Leto’s Osteria crafts handmade pasta with a hyper-seasonal focus.
There’s a feeling of calm as wait staff glides from kitchen to bar to tables in starched canvas aprons. A song by the Gypsy Kings trickles down from distant speakers as an attractive older couple slides into the seats of a high-top table at the big picture window overlooking Pennsylvania Park on Petoskey’s Lake Street.
Even in its first summer season, Leto’s Osteria emanates a vibe of confidence and polish, paired with a palpable warmth. You can see it in the exposed brick walls, the soft-spoken servers and the unapologetic love poured into the signature dishes.
Leto’s, and its modern-Italian concept, had a winding path to fruition, but in a way that felt like destiny. After eight years, POUR, the modern-American, seasonally focused restaurant that occupied the space, opted to close, pivot and reopen, with Chef Ray Kumm at the helm.
Kumm had moved to Northern Michigan and taken a job tending bar at POUR while laying plans for opening his own space. His plans to purchase a building fell through, but the management team at POUR saw an opportunity: Pull Kumm out from behind the bar and let him execute his vision in the kitchen instead.
The result, says General Manager Todd Chinnock, is a menu that is approachable, regionally rooted but with the urban sophistication that Kumm brings from previous positions in Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore. “This concept is all Chef ’s passion,” he says.
Chef Ray Kumm and his iconic rigatoni Amatriciana | Photo by Allison Jarrell Acosta
It’s not a chicken parmigiana et al dining experience—dishes are pasta-focused but refined. The small plates are lively spins on veg-forward, simple offerings but with plenty of layers—dishes like roasted Bear Creek Organic Farm carrots with green harissa, marinated fennel, sunflower crema and pumpkin seed dukkah or cauliflower frito with limonata agrodolce, basil, spring onion and nigella seeds.
For entrees, classics like cacio e pepe ride alongside standouts like mushroom Malfadine, which explodes with a sort of umami wizardry that makes you dive in again and again, trying to savor and sort the flavors. The dish’s porcini-infused pasta is tossed with roasted hen-of-the-woods mushrooms, sun-dried pepper butter, spring onions and grana Padano. A small but well-edited offering of proteins rounds out the entrée menu, including Berkshire pork Milanese, made from a heritage breed of locally produced pork.
With the exception of a few menu staples, the dishes rotate and are hyper-seasonal, but one to count on is the rigatoni Amatriciana: big, simple pasta rounds, the kind that conjure preschool macaroni necklaces. “This is the first dish I made for my wife when we were dating,” Kumm says. “And it will be the last dish to ever leave this menu.” He unabashedly admits it’s his favorite; not complicated, elaborate or ornate—just a big, red bowl of pasta, almost anathema to the twists and turns the rest of the menu’s classic dishes get. The tomato sauce with red onion has the warming bite of Aleppo chili and a salty hit of smoked guanciale, pork jowl with a distinctive rich flavor. The overall warmth is unmistakable; this is a dish you eat past the point of fullness and think about for days.
Mushroom Malfadine | | Photo by Allison Jarrell Acosta
Even once the plates are cleared, after a bourbon/coffee amaro cocktail and a minute to digest, it’s the kind of food that makes you wish for leftovers (you’ll have them) and a minute to take just one more forkful.
“We want to maintain the joy of pasta,” Kumm says. “It should create a warm, strong reception. When you cook with the best ingredients and treat them with respect, food can be simple—there’s nothing to hide behind.”
Dining and Cooking