Bella Fortuna North

Meh.
Wanted to love this place.
Heard so much about it.
It’s got all the makings of an idyllic experience: beautiful setting, bocce ball, lovely bar, inviting gardens, BUT the food! The food just isn’t there.
I ordered a caprese salad, BUT knowing this is northern Michigan and only late July, I asked our server: «I don’t mean to be annoying, but are the tomatoes really actually ripe or are they from Sisco or GFS?».
Our server, responding in mock horror at my question, exclaimed that «Chef Mario would never serve an unripened tomato!!».
Well, I’m here to tell us that he does, and he did.
The rest of the meal was just like this.
My Zucchini Parmagiana from the wood fired oven was actually cold on one side and medium hot on the other — seriously inedible. The pizza was soggy in the middle, and the whole experience was just too mediocre.
We left hungry — $ 100 later…
Go to 9 Bean Rows or Martha’s — skip this place. It’s trying to be something it just cannot pull off.

We dined with friends and enjoyed the Sunday family-​style dinner. The chef prepares a menu of dishes that make the most of fresh local ingredients. Every course was outstanding. The service was great. We will definitely be back!

We went to Bella Fortunate for birthday dinner. Everything was great, ambience, service and food was fantastic! There is an impressive wine selection and beautiful live classic guitar with glass of wine for a special kind of dessert. At the end the host had offer us a complimentary picture. Everything at this place turned out fantastic. I highly recommend this place! Unforgettable !!!

This is an update: went here again to give it another chance since we heard there was a new cook. Ate inside this time, attractive dining room although our table barely fit 4, in any case, we had lively conversation going so it worked fine. We had a great waiter, who made every effort to pronounce things in the proper Italian always a nice bonus! we bought the special red wine which we loved! Caesar salad and a raddicchio salad apps. The Caesar for me was not anchovy enough, and the cheese was overly grated: you could not see it kinda of, and the olive oil could not be tasted: this is an Americanized Ceasar, it was the creamy style prep, I prefer traditional, but thats fine. They were kind of small. No drama to presentation. The raddicchio salad looked very unappealing: a random assortment of stuff sort of tossed together. Second course took a long time to come, but like I said we had good conversation going. We ordered Cornish hen, and Salmon. My hen was cooked fine but the veggies where cut into chunks that were too large, and beans were overcooked somewhat, carrots and zucchini were too hard. The seasoning was nothing to write home about. The salmon looked totally unappeaing like it had sat under the light too long, palid… the entire plate. In fact, although the food is OK here, «plating» per se does no seem to exist. No sense of visually excitement at all, no visual appeal. Things were on white plates with big empty spaces that made no sense. Spinach side was good. If I were running this kitchen I would also change out the plates; the hen maybe on a nice decorated or terra-​cotta plate to highlight it’s rustic appeal. I would make sure my cooks were making it «pretty» on the plate. I would bump up the portion size a bit, what, romaine lettuce is expensive? Dessert was tasty. Priced kinda high for the unexciting presentation and very basic recipes. Won’t go back, its just sad because this could be a go to place: there surely have their merchandising area «down»: if you want food at the same price more or less but much better, try Riverside Inn in Leland. ALWAYS good, well presented staff, great service, very pleasant atmosphere and a lot of pride in both preparation and plating.
We ate, but we did not «dine» !

We had 4 adults and 3 teens here and not one complaint from anyone on the food. Everything was delicious. I had the mushroom appetizer and the tenderloin steak and both were wonderful. I think it was the best tenderloin I’ve had in a very long time. Our only complaint was that it was the waiters 2^nd day and he just wasn’t up to speed yet.

We recently dined here and had a really bad experience from start to finish. Our drink order was screwed up. The bread was stale. The pizza was worse than frozen pizza. All the appetizers were universally bad (almost everything was cold and the mussels tasted rancid). The pasta was mushy. The entrees were forgettable at best. Lastly, the prices were through the roof!

Created an account to write this review. Terrible food, terrible (young and inexperienced) service. We came all the way from Glen Lake to give this restaurant a shot, while the drive is breathtakingly beautiful the experience was not worth the trip.
Mussels were inedible, mozzarella al forno was small cold mozzarella balls in lukewarm subpar tomato sauce, pizza was cafeteriaesque at best. Bunch of ‘Italian” stuff for sale in the lobby – ugh, very Cracker Barrel. Lights too bright, ambiance all wrong, drinks watery, prices sinful for the quality. Clientele seems to be a much older crowd.
IF you are considering making the trip to come here – in a word – don’t. There are way too many excellent restaurants on the peninsula to spend an evening here… alas, we wasted the last night of our vacation (and a bunch of money) in this dining room.
Their self-​purported hype and pretension only add to the ridiculously bitter aftertaste of this place. Bella Fortuna: no thanks.

We hosted the rehearsal dinner for our son’s wedding here. I can’t say enough about what a great experience it was. The manager, Vicki, accommodated us with only 3 weeks notice (another restaurant had inadvertently double booked us). She worked closely with the chef and me to come up with an awesome menu. We held a cocktail hour before dinner on the lovely patio (complete with a Bocce court), then a several-​course dinner was served. The food was outstanding and was served with perfect timing. They even quickly whipped up a delicious alternative for a vegetarian guest of ours for whom I hadn’t planned ahead. The wait staff was very prompt and gracious. The «house» wine is their own label imported from Tuscany and was excellent. Would definitely recommend to anyone visiting the Leelanau Peninsula!

Great muscles as an appetizer. Three entrees we tried trout rib eye and chicken all top notch. Desert a must – lemon mouse. Try to eat outside. Loud inside

Beautiful restaurant that serves bad food at a high price.
Four of us ordered dinner and they only brought entrees for three of us.
They forgot about my wifes order.
15 minutes later she got her walleye which she could not eat it was so bad.
I ordered crispy duck which was bland and not crispy.
Oh, well-​there are plenty of other choices in the area.

Lots of pretty weak reviews so far for a restaurant that promised so much, and, despite my hopes for a new star here in Leelanau County, I’ll agree that this appears to be just another over-​touted, overpriced mediocrity.
The service was less than stellar. Despite being there before noon and despite the place being only 25% full, it took them 45 minutes or so to get our food to the table. I wonder what they do on a busy Saturday night?
The food was OK, but only OK, and definitely pricey given both its quantity and quality. We had Mozzarella al Forno for an appetizer — a golf ball-​sized hunk of mozzarella with a strip of prosciutto wrapped around it in a dish with some tomato sauce. 2 bites for each of us, $ 8.00. Tasty, yes, but not THAT tasty.
I selected an Italian Panini sandwich for my main course from the very limited lunch menu (no pasta on the lunch menu???). Maybe I’m just unenlightened, but in my experience a panini is grilled. Not a Bella Fortuna panini! Mine was just meat, cheese, and onions between a couple of slices of fresh bread.
Aside from the fact that it wasn’t grilled, the other strange thing about that sandwich is that, rather than being layered, the different contents were all arranged in separate areas of the sandwich — the prosciutto was in one quadrant, the salami in another, the onions in another, etc. I don’t know if that was intentional (perhaps that’s how it’s done for the cognoscenti in Florence and Boca Grande), but I wish I had known this before I started eating the sandwich. I’d certainly have rearranged the contents to distribute them evenly and I would have enjoyed it much more.
My wife enjoyed her $ 12 personal-​sized pizza, but I wasn’t impressed with the bite I tried. KInd of a funny crust and a strange taste. I certainly wouldn’t order it. Definitely not on a par with the goumet pizzas that Chef Todd used to make at Sgt. Pepperoni’s in Suttons Bay a couple years ago.
We ARE going to give this another shot, because the dinner menu is far more extensive (but also much more expensive). It would be nice — oh heck, WONDERFUL — to have a really outstanding restaurant nearby. We used to make the drive over to Tapawingo regularly and never begrudged spending our $ 150+ because the food was incredible. It looks like it would be easy to reach that level at dinner in Bella Fortuna. I sure hope the food warrants it.
If it doesn’t, I wonder how they plan to survive once summer ends and the fudgies go home? I have difficulty picturing throngs of locals eager to spend that much money on so-​so food.

Not ready for prime time. They need to shut the place down for a couple of weeks and retrain the staff on how to serve a fine dining meal, as well as how to handle service failure.
They couldn’t figure out who got what item or what order to serve the items to people. This was especially disappointing because they say they will serve either American or Italian style with the salads (before or after the main course), however, they didn’t do either, they served it in the middle of the meal. On a couple occasions they just brought dishes out and basically threw them in front of you. Then, when the issue was was raised, they only made excuses.
As for the food, the gnuuni was awful, pure butter, and this is what they said was the house speciality. The ice tea was more like water than tea and the excuse given was that it was herbal tea. So, why then make it with herbal tea if it doesn’t work?
The Tuscan soup and the olive appetizer were both very good. Others at the table enjoyed the mussels too. So, there is hope on the food side.
Bottom line was there was no management in sight and no indication management was even paying attention to what was going on.
PS: Don’t let them seat you in the bar area if you plan to talk at dinner.

We had a mixed experience at Bella. First, the renovations are outstanding. The place is just lovely. We sat on the patio because we did not have reservations, and we loved it.
The waitress was very inexperienced and had to read everything from her pad. She tried very hard but was not well versed on the food or its preparation. But she was very young. More seasoned waitstaff would be a plus. We prefer brains over looks.
We ordered inexpensive wine and it was nicely complex and perfect with the food. The arocini was the best part of the meal but expensive. The gnudi was tasty but also pricey for the portion size. The duck was exquisite. We also ordered an eggplant appetizer but t was inedible. The crust was leathery and bland and the eggplant was undercooked and bitter. The lemoncello was swoon-​worthy.
We will be back but because we had such highs and lows, worry that it will be very expensive to sample too many items to find the ones we like.
I did not notice if there is a pre-​fixe menu, but that might solve that issue.

We had two dinners at Bella Fortuna and had a positive experience both times. Both evenings were with a large party and the waitstaff performed well considering they were a young and newly trained group. The meals were well prepared and presented. The pricing is quite high, but there appears to be considerable support at this time from the surrounding community.

We surprised our visiting children with reservations at this new restaurant. They were excited, especially since they’d had a positive experience at the chef’s previous restaurant. But the evening went downhill right after the appetizers — our son ordered an entrée, waited… waited…waited…only to be told by the waitress that the restaurant was out of that dish. He tried again with another entrée… another wait… another disappointment. When he asked to speak to the manager, instead of acknowledging a problem and making things right the manager basically threw the hapless waitperson under the bus. (It turned out that the owners had come in earlier with a large party that, along with a large dinner crowd, seemed to have blindsided the kitchen.) Surrounding tables also seemed to be experiencing problems. It was such a disappointing experience that we cancelled reservations for dinner later in the week. Startups may indeed be hell… but I hope this establishment can take control of its inventory and ordering issues before too many other diners have a negative experience.

This is a fantastic new restaurant that features a true Florentine dining experience! The owners live in Florence and summer in Leland. They have brought their favorite cuisine and some of their favorite chefs to this beautiful new restaurant. We started with warm olives and Arancini de Riso (risotto balls stuffed with mozzarella) as appetizers and both were delicious. I follow with Pappardelle Cinghiale — home made Pappardelle pasta with boar ragu — that was a lot but too good not to demolish. My wife had the Linguine Aglio e Olio — Linguini with garlic, chilies, parsley and olive oil — that proved to be just as good and a better sized Primera Piati. For our main course I had the Anatra — crispy duck with a pear and fig mostarda that provided a delicious counterpoint to the savory duck — while my wife opted for the Galletto Arrosto — spit roasted chicken with limoncello vinaigrette that she said was also delicious. For desert she had the Pancetta and I had the Limoncello custard with a Florentine cookie. Both were excellent but the Limoncello custard is a «destination desert». The restaurant just opened and the servers are still getting comfortable but the service was still very good. The wine list is all Italian. We chose from the low end of the price range and both of our wines were really delicious.