A week ago, in a surprise announcement first reported by Eater, Sarah Welch said she was planning to leave her role as executive chef at Marrow. For the next chapter of her culinary career, she’s headed north — to Traverse City with her husband Cameron Rolka, to start a new restaurant. Rolka is executive chef at Mink, a Corktown oyster bar, where Welch is a partner.
For the past seven years, Welch has largely been the face of Marrow, a butcher shop and eatery she helped open with owner Ping Ho, where she earned a James Beard nomination in 2023.
Since its humble beginnings in a quaint West Village storefront, Marrow has expanded significantly: last year, the company opened a second Birmingham location, and it was even a dining option at Tigers’ games. It supplies meats to numerous metro Detroit restaurants, and they can even be found at major grocery stores. This year, Marrow is in the process of opening one of its most ambitious projects yet: a 14,000 square-foot meat processing plant and restaurant in Eastern Market, which will become its flagship location.
Welch says the new spot in Traverse City, planned to open in 2026 at 430 East Front Street, in many was offers a return to her roots: running a small-scale restaurant in a hands-on way.
It’s also the first time in a while she’ll be working directly alongside her husband, who she first met on the line at Ann Arbor’s Mani Osteria and Bar. The two are hosting a pop-up on Sunday, April 27 at Host Utica.
“This is the first time we’ve been able to create a menu and cook together in a really long time, so I think we’re just having fun,” Welch says. “We’re not testing dishes for our menu or anything like that. We’re just looking forward to cooking together.”
Welch’s last day at Marrow is April 30, but she plans to remain an owning partner at both Marrow and Mink. Rolka has not yet announced a last day at Mink and instead is in the process of finding “a succession plan that supports it so it can continue being as incredible as it has been under his watch,” according to Welch.
On Monday, Hour Detroit chatted with Welch in a phone interview about why she left Marrow and what she’s looking forward to at the new restaurant.
How long had you been considering the move [to Traverse City]?
I resigned at Marrow right around the time that we were going to launch Birmingham. I’ve been at Marrow for seven years. It’s a lot of time to dedicate to one place, I definitely think it’s grown and changed a lot. And that’s part and parcel of what’s necessary to survive as a restaurant.
But just seeing Mink alongside Marrow’s growth and change, it’s an interesting parallel. I think Mink is hard and challenging in its own ways, but it provides the simple joy of running a restaurant. And lots of control, lots of guest interaction, a regularly rotating menu. Marrow is so big, and with the butcher shop, there are just so many other variables that are at play that over time. I just missed the simplicity of running a restaurant.
But [at Marrow,] adding in all these other variables, over time, I got less and less control of it. And it became hard work in the direction of the industry that I’m not really interested in. I don’t want to be the head of a multi-outlet corporation, you know? I want to be an owner-operator/chef that works in their business and has connections with their guests and their staff.
It’s not like the company didn’t provide me upward mobility. They definitely did, but it wasn’t upward mobility that aligned with my interests anymore.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. This is kind of a broad question, but I just wondered if you had any you had any favorite memories that stick out to you from the past seven years at Marrow.
Oh, man, there’s so many. That’s a hard one. I think the first time we got James Beard nominated, that was insane, just because I never thought that that would ever happen.
The little moments of being on the floor and connecting with guests that were there and very excited to be there. I remember a month ago, this woman was so happy she just kissed me on the cheek.
And like — huge violation of my personal space (laughs). But for me, I’m not looking at the business in a purely financial way — I’m doing it for those experiences. And it was a nice reminder for me of why I do it and what I want more of. Obviously, I don’t want random women kissing me on the face all the time, but I do want to create experiences that cause that kind of joy in an intimate way. And I think the more I stepped into those boardrooms, or the more that I became part of growing the company, instead of tending to the company; the less joy I got.
I had hired people to replace myself, to plan for my upward mobility. So, at a certain point it’s like, well, I’m not going to un-hire this incredible team of people that I have; I’m just going to let them grow and flourish in a space that I used to have, and move on to what’s next for me.
And the name for the new place is still pending…right?
We have a working name, but we’re waiting for our brand to launch to announce it.
And at the new place, I’m assuming you want to have more of a hands-on role, working in the kitchen?
My husband and I will be owner-operators. In getting the James Beard nominations I’ve gotten, and the recognition that I’ve gotten, I’m satiated with the accolades I’ve received. And I think that my husband has an under-spoken talent. So, I think of this as an opportunity to put him on a pedestal with his culinary talent and get him the recognition he deserves.
I look to take more of a supporting role in that. I want to be the co-pilot and support him culinarily, and on the front end with the beverage program. Which is part of the reason why I’m going up there to work in the wine industry for a little bit before we open, just to get myself familiarized with local wine and local beverage and front-of-house service. So, it’s not to say I’ll be stepping away from the kitchen, but I really want him to have an opportunity to get some of the accolades that I had the opportunity to get at Marrow.
It’s going to be sort of an intimate setting, right? 25 seats?
Yeah, similar layout to Mink. We want to have predominantly bar seating. We’re gonna have a big oyster program there. We hope to bring our caviar program and our tin fish program up there, and we’ll have a fried fish sandwich on the occasion and do patio parties. We have a big outdoor space that we hope to rehab in the first couple years. We want to be a neighborhood spot, but we also want to be an opportunity for people to go out and spoil themselves.
Do you think you’ll offer a tasting menu?
We’re up in the air on our feelings on tasting menus. Cam said he’s done over 400 dishes at Mink since it opened. And I don’t know, if you’re not a cook, what that feels like, but 400 dishes is a lot of creative children to put out into the world. So I think we’re going to take the approach that Marrow has, where we have seasonally rotating food items, and then judge the interest for a tasting menu with the community. We don’t want to be fancier than what the community wants. And we don’t know what the client base is like up there, so we’re going to let them take the lead on what they want. But I do think that we will have a tasting menu available at certain points. It may just not be all the time.
Are there any staples from either Mink or Marrow that you think will most likely be on the menu?
I think that we’re looking to bring some of our favorites that we created at both restaurants. I would love to see the lobster roll that Cam created at Mink as a regular cast member on our menu. I love it, and if you’ve had it, I think you know why. And obviously he’s very discerning about his oyster selection, so I think we’ll have a similarly curated oyster list. He has 400 dishes in his portfolio to choose from, so whether he chooses to go with those dishes or continue being as creative as he is, I’ll leave it up to him. We’re also just excited to get to know the farming community up there. We’ll have access to a totally different list of ingredients once we get up there, and I’m sure that that will serve as inspiration for new menu items.
Will you work in any Michigan-caught fish? Whitefish, or anything like that?
It could be kind of hard to source fish that is sustainable from local fisheries. I know that a lot of the fish that we get is caught in Canada and shipped over. I think we’re open to supporting the local fisheries, if that’s a sustainable thing. And I think we’ll know more once we get up there. Eagle River is a fish company that we’ve wanted to work with in the past. That’s a trout company. But the lake fisheries, we don’t source from them very frequently now, just because of over-fishing. But if we’re able to do that, obviously we will.
Are you guys going to do staging around the area, sort of in preparation?
We have some friends up there that we’ll hope to work with. Andy Elliot at Modern Bird has been hugely helpful. The guys over at Crocodile Palace have been open books about helping us figure out what our financials should look like; same with Jen [Blakeslee] at Cook’s House. And so, you know, I think we’ll lean on them to help us and we’ll try and help them out while we have this lead time.
Will the new place have any affiliation with Backbone Hospitality [the hospitality group behind Marrow, Mink, and The Royce]?
No, not at all. Arguably, that is what we are attempting to break away from, a little bit. We just want to be owner-operators with full control. And to do that, we need to do it on our own.
I was reading in The Ticker that you have sort of a long-term goal of one day opening an “immersive culinary destination” on a plot of land in Traverse City. Would you be able to talk a little more about that?
Yeah, we eventually hope to have an even bigger presence in northern Michigan. But I think we’re really trying to do it all on our own, so it’ll just take time. Our whole goal for moving up north is to just be on more land and have greater access to the outdoors. So, you know, if we can combine that with our hospitality experience, I think that’s something that we want to do.
Are you going to miss Detroit? Do you think you’ll be back sometimes?
Oh yeah. I mean, my entire social network is in Detroit. I’m going to miss it a lot, but part of the reason why I’m leaving is just because I can’t be in the city without Marrow being kind of mine. I’ve literally been waking up to do Marrow every day for the past seven years. I’ll miss Detroit a lot, but it’s best for Marrow if I give it some space, and it’s best for me if I take time to figure out how to gracefully execute what’s next.
Find more of the latest metro Detroit food and restaurant news at hourdetroit.com.
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