Downtown Italian restaurant to close. Here’s what led to the decision

Prairie Street Paste, 51 N. Prairie St., Galesburg.

Prairie Street Pasta will serve its last meal at the end of the month.

The Italian restaurant announced its upcoming closure in a Facebook post Friday. 

The post said: “It is with heavy hearts that we will be closing at the end of the month. We will be moving on to other life pursuits. We want to thank all our customers for supporting us this last year and a half.”

Co-owners Daniel and Renae Earnhart opened Prairie Street Pasta in February 2021 at 51 N. Prairie St., replacing the former Charred 51.

Daniel Earnhart tells WGIL, “There’s just a lot of factors that went into the decision.

“Running a restaurant is stressful under normal circumstances. Add on top of that, everything going on with food costs, product availability, employee uncertainty and the situation with COVID and the stricter way of dealing with health issues. We just didn’t see a lot of that coming, not to mention we were trying to start a family.”

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Earnhart said it’s a difficult time to be in the restaurant business.

“People loved us, and we had a lot of great reviews,” he said. “And we have a beautiful building. But there’s been other places in town who have had to make the same decision. I think maybe the stress levels are just a little bit too high right now.”

The Earnharts own the building and say it’s for sale. 

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