I grew up in Rockford, but moved away about 20 years ago. I know this place is a "Rockford staple" but I can't see why. I went here the other night with my in laws. First off it seems the average meal price is about $16-$17. That's fine. However, the parking lot is terrible, you practically have to use the neighboring businesses parking lots to park. Second, the restaurant is crowded. We sat in the leaning tower, which is essentially a circular shaped room designed like the leaning tower of Pisa. It's barely large enough for the table in there and was quite claustrophobic. Even if we weren't there the rest of the restaurant wasn't much better. The ceiling is really low in most places, which lends to the claustrophobic atmosphere. I ordered the eggplant Parmesan. It came with bread, which was the best part of the meal, but it's pretty hard to mess up Italian bread. It also came with a salad, I chose their famous "special" salad. It is basically a garden salad with hard boiled eggs and sausage drenched in Italian dressing. It's nothing special, and pretty soggy. The eggplant itself was flavorless, except for the natural flavor of the eggplant. The breading was a basic bread crumb you can buy at any supermarket, and the eggplant was slightly over cooked. It was drenched in marinara sauce, which again was flavorless. It tasted like canned tomato sauce with nothing extra added. Unlike a traditional Parmesan that comes on a bed of pasta, it came with a side of pasta, which was barely large enough to go with the eggplant. The pasta again was covered in the flavorless tomato sauce. I also ordered an Italian sausage with it, which was a few dollars extra. Again the sausage was a basic mild Italian sausage you can get at any supermarket, nothing special. Everything arrived on separate, very cheap looking plastic plates. For desert you got a scoop of ice cream, again probably a breyers or similar. The scoop was very small and I'm sure a standard ice cream cone comes with more ice cream. My wife ordered a pasta with a garlic sauce. Now if you say it's a garlic sauce you would assume you could taste, or even smell the garlic, which you couldn't. The sauce was essential olive oil, with maybe some garlic in it, but again no flavor, and the pasta was undercooked. Honestly, even their drink came in small glasses. I got a margarita, which was not even served in a margarita glass, just a small cup that would be used for water in most other restaurants. Honestly, for a $50 meal I expect more than that, not to mention the tables all have cheap paper placemats similar to those in a pizza parlor. I'll let the Rockford natives who know no better and think this is a great mid scale restaurant have it. Personally, I felt like I got sub par food, which was worse then many meals I had while in the military at the dining facility. I don't think I'll be back. read more