Like manna from heaven, Church Street Social offers traditional food with a twist

Meghan Diemel

Contributor

August 4, 2025

HAZELHURST – Providing something different than the traditional Northwoods dining experience, Church Street Social – located at 7045 Church St. in Hazelhurst – has been serving up a scratch-made menu in a vintage-inspired setting for the last four years.

Owner Darcy Rich, who has spent much of her life in the hospitality industry, said she wanted her own place to serve others with great meals and a unique dining experience, featuring an ever-changing menu.

Rich said she doesn’t use typical wholesale suppliers, but instead sources the ingredients for her menu on her own – purchasing two to three cows a year and buying from local whole-food purveyors, like Hillstar Farm in Tomahawk, and from local farmers’ markets.

“We try to use… the best ingredients, fresh ingredients,” she said.

Once working at a ranch in Wyoming under an executive chef, Rich said the experience taught her a lot about sourcing ingredients and the use of spices, while her grandmother’s legacy also influenced how she developed her menu.

Everything her grandmother made, she said, was either fresh from her garden or canned.

Rich said many of Church Street Social’s menu items are inspired by her grandmother’s recipes, including the homemade salad dressing.

“I grew up never really having food that had preservatives in it, which was great,” she said.

With menu options based on what’s available and in-season, Rich said there is one consistent option from week to week: her much-beloved lasagna, which is served on Thursdays.

She said it’s an old Sicilian recipe, with a Beaujolais sauce that is cooked for 18-20 hours.

Rich said she also uses five cheeses in her lasagna, as well as Italian sausage.

Outside of Thursday’s special, Rich said the menu includes what she calls traditional food with a twist.

She said one day she might do turkey, mashed potatoes and dressing; and chicken and dumplings the next; followed by traditional meatloaf or stuffed green peppers – all of which are complemented by a salad featuring a variety of ingredients like beets, feta cheese and balsamic vinegar.

In addition, Rich said the bread at Church Street Social is also a menu highlight, baked fresh.

“We make four to five types of bread, and we try to mix them up,” she said. “You always get fresh-baked bread [with your meal].”

Saturday at Church Street Social, Rich said, is always a comfort food day, and, recently, the restaurant began offering breakfast on Sundays.

“We do breakfast from 9 [a.m.] until noon, and we’re the only place in Hazelhurst where you can get breakfast,” she said. “I think our breakfast is really good, too, because we mix that up. Right now, a [menu] favorite is our cinnamon-raisin French toast – it’s really good. It comes with whipped honey butter.”

Rich said she also bakes all Church Street Social’s desserts, using in-season fruits for her pies.

“There’s not a lot of waste at Church Street,” she said. “We usually sell out of food. We try to do anywhere from 50 to… up to 65 meals a day here. We don’t have waste. Portions are huge. So, people get to take stuff home for the next meal, which is nice.”

Rich said it’s not just the food menu at Church Street Social that she has carefully curated and sourced ingredients for.

The bar menu, she said, received that same attention to detail.

“Our drinks – they’re over the top,” she said. “We use Sugar In The Raw for the old-fashioneds. Our olives are huge – they’re colossal olives – if you want those in your old-fashioned. We dry all of our own oranges here for old-fashioneds. Our cherries are wild cherries from northern Italy. If you have, let’s say, a White Russian, you’re getting pure cream in your White Russian.”

Ambience with a unique, vintage feel

With a menu reminiscent of stopping into her grandma’s house for dinner, Rich said the space at Church Street Social also reflects her desire for everyone to feel at home, with an eclectic spin that speaks to her worldwide travels and perspective.

Even the restaurant’s location, she said, “has a lot of history.”

“It used to be an old church for Hazelhurst,” she said. “It was a cobbler shop, it was a hunting shack and then it was an Asian restaurant… There never was a bar, so I created all that – I created the bar atmosphere.”

Reclaimed materials, Rich said, are used throughout the restaurant – with many pieces given to her as gifts, like the stained-glass windows, or sourced from former area Northwoods resorts, like the restaurant’s Buffalo china.

Rich said the restaurant’s walls feature Vargas prints, and the space is filled with retro lamps and Century chairs.

“I’ve always been… a collector, but I have a lot of family stuff in here [as well],” she said. “We have my family’s Civil War discharge papers hanging on the wall. We have a lot of family photos, like my grandfather’s first-grade school picture.”

Rich said she wanted the bar area to have a speakeasy feel – which is highlighted by an old church organ, one that she gutted to fit her needs.

A second bar in the space, she said, was created out of an old organ top.

Vintage bar stools surround the bar, Rich said, and the restaurant’s six-top is a reclaimed door that she used to create the tabletop.

In every nook and cranny, she said she has tried to pay homage to the extensive history of the building, while adding her own touches.

“The front part of the building is rather old, and it’s got a lot of character to it,” she said.

A community of industry friends lends support

Located a little more than four miles south of Minocqua, Rich said the bonus of owning a business in Hazelhurst is that it’s quieter and more laid-back than its well-known tourism sister city to the north.

Throughout the region, she said all the bar and restaurant owners work together to support each other.

If people stop in to Church Street Social and they’re looking for something not featured on that day’s menu, Rich said she is happy to recommend other establishments.

“Whitman’s [Bar] – they do a great burger…,” she said. “[At] the Hazelhurst Pub, Bill does pizza [and] makes a great steak sandwich. We all get along, which is really nice, too… We’re all friends; we help each other out. If we need to borrow something, they’re more than willing. And we support each other, too. We hang out at each other’s bars, restaurants. It’s nice.”

Before a visit

Church Street Social is open Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, serving food from 12-7 p.m., with Sunday breakfasts served from 9 a.m. to noon.

She said they take reservations for half of their limited seating, typically for up to six people, and keep the remainder open for walk-ins.

Patrons, Rich said, can also eat at the bar.

Nearly every minute of each day, she said, is spent pouring energy and time back into the restaurant, she said.

“I don’t open till noon, [but] I have to get up at 6 [a.m.] – it takes me that long to prepare everything [and] make sure it’s fresh,” she said. “We’re not just coming into a restaurant, starting up a deep fryer and throwing stuff in… There’s a lot of time that goes into the menu.”

Though it can be stressful being a restaurant owner in an ever-evolving industry, especially one located so close to a popular vacation destination, Rich said she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“It’s a passion – I do love what I do,” she said. “And the people [who] come in here, they appreciate it, which makes it worth getting up every morning and redoing it and being consistent in what you do.”