“I thought the menu was just wrong,” says Jim Leonardo.
“In Europe, there is a rich tradition of wine pairing,” says Leonardo, the new chef at Vinology. On Main Street in Ann Arbor, however, it’s been a bumpy, uphill road.
“We’ve been through several chefs,” says Vinology co-owner John Jonna. “Our concept here, my daughter [Kristin] and I, is to have the wine, and make a meal for the wine. It’s reverse thinking. Chefs normally don’t think that way.”
Kristin, currently on maternity leave from her position as general manager, and her father opened the restaurant in 2005, in partnership with John Padmos and their landlords, Chet Czaplicka, Jon Carlson, and Greg Lobdell. Carlson and Lobdell sold their shares several years ago.
One chef, Brandon Johns, took Vinology in a strong locavore direction–then left to found the ultra-local Grange Kitchen. His successor tried to bring in a “really strong Asian influence,” Leonardo says. “That didn’t work at all.” Patient and entrepreneurial, Jonna decided to rethink everything.
The Jonnas are Chaldeans–“Middle Eastern Christian,” Jonna explains. His parents immigrated to Detroit from Iraq in 1949, and his father started out working “in a little bitty grocery store, because that was the only job he could get.” Jonna is one of eight children, and the only one who went to college.
The family saved up, and eventually owned two grocery stores and a liquor store. But in 1968, when Jonna was a U-M undergrad, all three stores were burned during the riots.
“All of us went to work,” Jonna recalls. He got a job as a janitor, mopping floors at Hudson’s. One brother went to work in construction and eventually formed his own company. Another became a Realtor. “My other brother, Eddie, started Merchant of Vino. All of this after the riots, with zero income. With zero money. I mean zero.”
Jonna took a job at his brother’s store. At first, he recalls, they sold cheap, screw-top wines, two bottles for eighty-eight cents–“Thunderbird wine, MD 20/20, Ripple.” When a man came in and asked them to carry Lambrusco, they had to go out and buy a corkscrew. They gave customers free samples, sold 100 cases, and were on their way to being one of Detroit’s biggest wine merchants. Whole Foods bought what had grown to be a six-store chain in 1997; Eddie’s sons, Matt and Marc, now run Plum Market.
“Most people worry about losing money,” Jonna says. “We don’t, because we can always start again.” So once he concluded that Vinology wasn’t working well, he started talking to Leonardo about redoing the entire menu.
That was in 2009. “It was a long process,” says Leonardo. “I just kind of sat outside for a while, and walked up and down the street, just trying to get an idea for what was in the neighborhood, and what the competition was. What was lacking?”
He returned to the Jonnas’ original idea–food chosen to complement wine–but with an entirely new menu. Several items–beef short ribs, loin of lamb, Amish chicken ballotine–are seasoned, vacuum-packed, and cooked in a water bath for as long as three days. It’s the first time this process, called sous vide, has been used in Washtenaw County. “Our health inspector says he actually had to go to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to work with us and help us design the [food safety] program,” Leonardo says.
“Before working here, my wine knowledge was pretty minimal,” Leonardo admits. But, he says, “It’s changed my concepts for cooking a lot–it makes me reexamine the flavors and how they change with wine. The ultimate goal of this restaurant, which has become my goal, is creating food that makes wine taste better.”
