24 Hours in Wausau-Stevens Point and YaiGu Hot Bowls
The Churn for November 14, 2025
In this week’s edition of The Heavy Table’s Churn newsletter, we travel to a somewhat-off-the-beaten path part of Wisconsin and find some culinary triumphs, and we explore an inconsistent but charming new spot in Cathedral Hill.
24 HOURS IN: CENTRAL WISCONSIN
A day-long food and drink-blitz through Wausau and Stevens Point
By James Norton
One of the most generally encouraging things about food writing in the Upper Midwest is the way that all the trends, including the best and most serious, eventually seem to ripple their way out to just about everywhere. That means, increasingly, that you can travel to medium-sized and small cities scattered throughout the region and find legitimately good food that wouldn’t be out of place in the heart of the metro area.
In general when we’ve found ourselves in Central Wisconsin, we’ve been on our way to or from Door County. Red Eye Brewing in Wausau (above) has been a reliably good locally sourced restaurant and brewpub for years, but otherwise we’ve mostly overlooked this particular corner of the world.
These days, that would be a mistake. We spent 24 hours trucking around Wausau and Stevens Point researching an upcoming book and found ourselves happily overwhelmed by good food - and cocktails.
GREAT NORTHERN DISTILLING in Stevens Point (top) taps deeply into the area’s Polish heritage, making a traditional Central European Potato Vodka ($34 for 750ml). Potatoes are far less efficient starch conveyors than grain, which packs about three times much starch per pound. But they make a vodka that has a rich, silky mouthfeel and a sweet finish, which makes it a beautiful base for a martini. The distillery also makes a Jezynowka ($18 for 200ml) - a blackberry flavored brandy that’s a far cry from the syrupy sweet mass-produced competition in this niche. The earthy, bright intensity of fresh berries comes through in every sip, and its 65 proof strength packs a punch.
If you’re lucky enough to be at the distillery when they’re serving their Saigon Coffee cocktail, order it - it’s a mix of house-made coffee liqueur, cold-brew coffee, whipping cream, and the distillery’s ginseng whiskey. The interplay of the bitterness from the coffee and the astringent bite of the coffee makes a fascinating backstop for the sweetness of the liqueur and richness of the cream. It’s a hell of a cocktail, and feels like a Vietnamese riff on a White Russian.
And at any given moment, you should be able to enjoy the house Old Fashioned - made with whiskey, not brandy, but smooth, agreeable, light on its feet but not insubstantial, served with a quality cocktail cherry.
Great Northern Distilling, 1011 Second St., Stevens Point, Wisc., 715.544.6551, MON 4-10pm, TUE-THU 4-11pm, FRI 4pm-Midnight, SAT Noon-Midnight, SUN CLOSED
Across the street from Great Northern is MAIN GRAIN, a bakery and sandwich shop that would be competitive - if not dominant - in the Twin Cities metro. The shop’s Grilled Cheese ($13) was a perfect balance of crispy and chewy, and the tomato soup that came as a side was thick, deeply flavorful, and accented with herbs that added interest and lightness to the package.
The Clever Girl ($15) brings together Asiago thyme bread, artichoke pesto, smoked Gouda, smoked turkey, sweet corn butter, McClure’s pickles, and Produce Point Greens - it’s a remarkably flavorful, balanced, light, delicious sandwich. We tried one of the bakery’s Salt Bagels ($2.75) - it was pleasantly salty, aggressively chewy, but quite tasty overall.
Main Grain, 1009 First St. Suite B and C, Stevens Point, 715.630.1486, TUE-SUN 7am-2pm, MON CLOSED
As good as the cocktail situation was at the Great Northern, it’s equally enjoyable at KNOWLTON HOUSE, where the Ten Head line of spirits are made by distilling whey from the nearby Mullins Cheese factory, a company literally married into the distillery’s ownership group. The milk-derived spirits have a mellow fullness to them that is brought full circle when they’re clarified into an antique cocktail known as a Milk Punch - the milk solids are removed before the punch is served, and the resulting cocktail is surprisingly light, bright, clean and lovely.
The distillery makes two kinds of gin. The first is a balanced and complex London dry style called Woodlawn Dry with botanicals that include juniper, birch bark and locally grown ginseng from Hsu’s - the same farm that supplies Great Northern. The second is called Meadow Cut, a light, bright, soft spoken gin that might be best presented in a light spritz on a hot day.
Knowlton House, 204575 County Road DB, Mosinee, Wisc., 715.693.0099, Bottle Shop & Tasting Bar: SUN 9am-5pm, MON-WED 11am-5pm, THU-SAT 11am-9pm, Cocktail Lounge and Dining: THU 4-9pm, FRI-SAT 11am-9pm, SUN 9am-3pm, MON-WED CLOSED
THE MILK MERCHANT is less a shop than it is a hub - it’s a place to buy some of Wisconsin’s best cheese, it’s home to gourmet olive oils and vinegars, it’s chockablock with kitchenware and utensils, and it’s home to an ongoing procession of food-forward events that tie the community and its artisans together. If you’re visiting Wausau, consider it a must-stop, and pick up some Pleasant Ridge Reserve or Hook’s 10-Year Cheddar while you’re there.
The Milk Merchant, 402 South 2nd Avenue, Wausau, Wisc., 715.843.0909, TUE-FRI 10am-6pm, SAT 9am-3pm, SUN-MON CLOSED
Locals told us that ERA CAFE was the place to get breakfast, and they weren’t wrong. Era is a place where the details are dialed in - orange juice, fresh squeezed; coffee delicious and balanced; bacon smokey, delicate, and crispy; syrup in a gorgeous glass bottle, warmed. I can’t remember the last time I had breakfast in a place so concerned with dotting all the I’s and crossing the T’s.
Crème Brûlée French Toast ($15) tends to skew way too sweet - not a problem at Era, where the custard was gently sweet but not insistent, and the crackly sugar layer on the toast was delicate and soft-spoken.
The Era’s Skillet ($17) wasn’t much more than the total of its bits (breakfast potatoes, cheddar, ham, bacon, sausage, onions, tomatoes, bell peppers, mushrooms) but those bits were all quite tasty, skillfully cooked and seasoned, and balanced in proportion to each other.
The restaurant’s Pancakes ($6 for kids) went in the direction of “cakes” rather than chewy, but they were light, fluffy and thoroughly enjoyable nonetheless.
Era Cafe (Wausau Location), 151523 County Rd Nn, Wausau, Wisc., 715.551.1172 SUN-THU 7am-3pm, FRI-SAT 7am-9pm
When we asked a group of local food makers where to get dinner in Wausau, ZAIKA GOURMET INDIA came up instantaneously, and was met with universal acclaim. It was decided, then: Rather than going for an Upper Midwestern supper club or old-school pizzeria, we were off to a relatively new spot serving food inspired by flavors from the other side of the planet.
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