In April, Sarah Welch, executive chef at Marrow, made a surprising announcement: She was leaving Detroit and the butcher shop and eatery she helped start seven years ago. The two-time James Beard nominee in the best Great Lakes chef category (2020 and 2023) is ready 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, Umbo. Rolka is executive chef at Mink, a Corktown oyster bar where Welch is a partner.
Welch says the Up North spot is planned to open in 2026 at 430 E. Front St. Hour Detroit chatted with Welch before her last day at Marrow on April 30 about what she’s looking forward to at the new restaurant. To stay up to date, visit eatumbo.com.
What will your role at the new place look like?
My husband and I will be owner-operators. I’m satiated with the accolades I’ve received, and I think that my husband has an underspoken talent. So I think of this as an opportunity to get him the recognition he deserves.
I want to 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 to get myself familiarized with local wine and local beverage and front-of-house service.
It’s going to be sort of an intimate setting, right?
Yeah, similar layout to Mink. We want to have predominantly bar seating. We’re
going to have a big oyster program there. We hope to bring our caviar program and our tinned fish program up there, and we’ll have a fried-fish sandwich on 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.
Will any staples from either Mink or Marrow make it to the menu?
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 think we’ll have a similarly curated oyster list. 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, and I’m sure that that will serve as inspiration for new menu items.
Are you going to do staging around the area?
We have some friends up there that we’ll hope to work with. Andy Elliott 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 The Cooks’ House. I think we’ll lean on them to help us and we’ll try and help them out while we have this lead time.
Are you going to miss Detroit? Do you think you’ll be back sometimes?
Oh yeah, my entire social network is in Detroit. 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.
This story originally appeared in the July 2025 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Click here to get our digital edition.
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