Wandering Rockford on a Snowy Evening

Rockford, Illinois probably isn't at the top of any tourist's list of places to go. Nothing against the town, but it's always been a fairly nondescript city in my eyes that I drove through to get to Chicago or home from there. Thusly I was a bit surprised to enter the city limits and find that it had a population of around 150,000 which makes it the third largest city in the state. The population distribution of Illinois is very different than here in the Land of Cheese. In Wisconsin, we have about 5.5-6 million people with the two largest metro areas (Milwaukee and Madison) accounting for less than half of that. Illinois, on the other hand, has 12-13 million people with 9-10 million of them living in the Chicagoland area. Hence anything outside of the Chicago metro doesn't get much attention. Sure, Springfield and Champanabana do, but, generally, there's Chicago and then there's the rest of the state. And so I tend to think of areas outside of the city as being little burgs like Eau Claire.

The Dulcinea and I pulled into the hotel parking lot Sunday evening and checked into our room. After relaxing for a tad, we headed out for dinner. I discovered that Rockford had much in common with Madison. For instance, the interstate runs along Rockford's eastern perimeter as it does here. Does anyone know why the interstate runs so far from the center of Madison or Rockford? Granted, running it through downtown Madison would be highly impractical because of the lakes, but why so far away? Was the idea to encourage growth towards the freeway? Or perhaps to keep the noise and pollution away from the city?

Our hotel was next to the Highway 20 (State Street) exit and we took it west in search of food, bound and determined not to eat at a chain restaurant. This meant a fair amount of driving as the east side of Rockford was a disaster area of nothing but hotels, malls, parking lots, and chain stores & restaurants that stretched as far as the eye could see. It was just like area here where 151 and the interstate meet – a wasteland of malls where minimally-paid purveyors of fast food turn their eyes and backs upward from deep-fat fryers at the violet hour and head home. No Ionian white and gold to be had – just pre-fab big boxes.

As we approached the Rock River, nice old homes started appearing. I'd been to downtown Rockford several years ago to attend a show at the lovely Coronado Theater but didn’t take a grand tour of the area. We found it deserted that chilly Sunday night. The D was finicky but finally settled on this joint:



This is the Irish Rose Saloon. (Yes, I horked the photo from their website.) The place was absolutely gorgeous – a genuine saloon with pressed tin ceilings and lots of wood. I think the only thing that was missing was a duo of spittoons bookending the bar. By the door were some free papers and I grabbed copies of Rockford's alternative weekly, The Rock River Times as well as the latest Chicago Reader. Seeing the Reader there served to reinforce my notions of Chicago having great gravitas in Illinois. Here we were some 80 miles from the city yet its main alternative weekly was right in front of me. That being said, the cover of The Rock River Times featured a review of Richard Thompson's recent show at the Coronado.

The Irish Rose was a slightly upscale place with most entrees being around $13 and including a $25 rib eye. Our waiter was a nice gentleman who spoke just like Jim Belushi and even resembled him a little. The D ordered Chicken En Croute which had cheese and minced mushrooms tucked inside while I got the Chicken Breast Stuffed with Prosciutto & Chevre. Both were tasty although bits of the prosciutto were like shoe leather by the time they arrived at my table. Despite this and that the waiter had neglected to put in our order for a Fresh Tomato and Four Cheese focaccia hoolie on time for us to have it as an appetizer, our meal was tasty overall and it was nice to be able to support a locally-owned business.

Wandering out into the cold once more, we started our post-prandial trek with miles to go before we could sleep.