Octane InterLounge

One of my favorite restaurants. I love their Espresso Martini and their Macombo Salad. Everything is fresh and homemade. The atmosphere is chill. The staff is friendly, and the service is great. One of my go to places in town.

Two words… Espresso Martini! Yum! The food is delicious and the service is friendly and informative.

Outstanding! Patrick is the greatest chef! This place is a wow. Do yourself a favor. The food is great and the service the same. Grace is a great example of the terrific servers.

The Hawaii 5-​O is simply amazing. Wonderful atmosphere and just delightful. Best lunch in a long time!

I’m only in Rockford when I visit family, but when I am here I always come to octane. The atmosphere is fun, the drinks are good, the food is AMAZING. The twisted Mac and cheese is so good it makes me weak in the knees. The Brie grilled cheese is INCREDIBLE. the Macombo (sp?) salad is FRESH AS HELL. This is my favorite restaurant, and I can’t stay away. I went there twice this week. Added bonus there are a lot of farm fresh ingredients and supported local farms. Please go here!

This is a great restaurant. While living downtown, this was our go-​to-​place. Creative dishes, delicious food, and always fun specials to try. It can be tricky to find a seat since it is on the smaller side, especially when there is an event going on downtown. But completely worth the wait! Great service, friendly staff, and delicious cocktails.

I love love love Octane! Great food awesome drinks. And being Downtown Rockford I love supporting local business with awesome customer service.

Octane was great!
I needed a farm-​to-​table restaurant for a group of farmers I was hosting at work. Because I work with so many farms in northern Illinois, I know they use local produce and meat, but last week was the first time I was able to go there. The food was amazing — all ten of my guests (all farmers) absolutely loved the food. Everyone got something different and I got only rave reviews about everything. Personally being vegetarian, I got the thai noodles and they were excellent! The roasted chickpea appetizers were also fantastic. Thanks Patrick for the awesome food!
Grace was an amazing server. She was so friendly and so attentive. Even though I was there on work, she made me feel like I could relax and she would just take care of everything. She was great.
I would definitely recommend this place!

Loved it!!! My burger was delicious and boyfriend’s bowl was amazing. Our server was so friendly and fun to chat with. Amazing potato wedges. We had the almond joy iced coffee and it was super tasty (and sugary, fyi!). I would absolutely go back to try more items!

Super great restaurant and service. Chris was extremely knowledgeable about the menu and beverages ! Had a great cocktail menu and the food was fantastic! Will definitely be returning !

This is probably one of my favorite resteraunts in all of Rockford. Everything I have eaten there has been excellent, and I have been their quite a bit! The service is excellent, the environment is cool, and of coarse the food is great. I highly recommend this place for lunch or dinner.

Excellent food and service. Parents, don’t let the fact that this place does not have a «children’s» menu scare you away. I came here with 4 kids and the all loved their meals. The restaurant is able to make many of the menu items kid friendly. The staff is very accommodating and able to help you navigate through the menu. I’ll admit, I was a bit hesitant when we first arrived but was quickly won over. Whether you are a meat eater or vegetarian you will have a lot of tasty options.
The food is not only delicious (seriously, every single thing we ordered) it is locally sourced and many things are made in house. The hamburger sliders are big enough to make a meal if you order a side to go with it. My kids and hubby said it was the best burger they ever had… The vegetarian Thai pasta was awesome!

We had a south african white wine her that was perfect. I had one of the best date nights ever here. This place is all the rave. A bit pricier, worth every penny.

Great atmosphere and a menu with something for everyone. Its hard to find true vegetarian options sometimes, but they had plenty of choices. We’ll definitely come back anytime we’re in Rockford.

Excellent place to grab a bite to eat on a business day!
They had anything and everything in the menu, which made me concerned about food quality. However the spiced chicken sandwich I had was great! Meat was a little sweet but not overly sweet. The bread and presentation was excellent. Food was to the right quantity. I finished up all my meal and did not felt stuffed at all.
Will check you guys out again when in the area.

Decent quality good food BUT too overpriced. We were disappointed that regular menu wasn’t available on Saturday.

This is for the drinks. We had the Moscow mules which were very refreshing. It had the good quality ginger beer not the cheaper not so tasty one. Service took a while, we were pretty thirsty when we got there and had probably 5 servers walk by, we were addressed, but no orders taken until maybe 7 – 10 minutes later. Atmosphere– I was expecting «Octane» to be a darker, louder music type of bar. It looked more like a crunchy coffee shop where people were talking and chatting w full lights on. Cool though to have coffee so late and now I get the Octane part. Overall very nice people, cool funky spot and since that area of Rockford doesn’t have tons of options, it was a very nice place to go.

My dad, brother, boyfriend, and I all came here to celebrate my birthday a couple weeks ago. My brother is vegan, but my dad and boyfriend are like hardcore carnivores so it can be kind of tricky to find a place where everyone can find something they like. I noticed in previous reviews (and looking at their menu) that there were a few vegetarian/​vegan options, so I figured it would be good.
This place is deceptively large and goes back quite far on the inside. I was surprised when I went to go to the bathroom and saw an entire hallway and some side rooms for people to sit in too. Anyway, I started out with the Mai Tai cocktail and our waiter warned me that it was quite strong (is that a problem? nope!) and he wasn’t lying. I think of a Mai Tai as kind of a sweet syrup-​y drink but this was definitely the opposite, and it was great.
For my meal, I got the Three’s Company sandwich, which is grilled shredded chicken mixed with spinach, artichokes, and mozzarella cheese. It was super tasty, and reminded me a lot of the dip you can get as an appetizer. Just a sandwich instead. The potato wedges on the side were pretty good too but they’re a little stingy with those, you only get like 5 or 6 total. They’re bigger, but still. Don’t skimp on the potatoes!
Anyway, the service was pretty good too, nothing to complain about there. The parking is actually decent for downtown Rockford. There are some street spots and then there’s a fairly decent sized parking lot right across the street. I know that other places use that for parking too (like the District, which is just down the road) so it might be kind of full later on at night. I would definitely check this place out again!

The Octane is located in the old part of town and conveniently located just a block or so from the theater. As my wife and I were seeing a concert, before coming to the area I did some Unilocal reconnaissance and booked marked the Octane. Didn’t think about making reservation and we got lucky as we just got in with minutes to spare and were able to get sets at the bar… otherwise we would have been out of luck because all the tables were booked. So, word of caution, if you’re coming here and there is a show going on just down the block, you may want to make reservations.
The décor of the place is what I would call rather bazar and a bit cold. We found the service very good. They were on the spot, making sure our needs were taken care of and were very helpful in guiding us with choices on the menu.
I must admit, while checking out the appearance of the décor and the wait staff, I was slightly doubtful on the quality of the food. So, I was pleasantly surprised when it came out with a very high end presentation… to the point where it was artfully done. Then the most important, the food tasted really, really good!
Bravo, Octane! You once again taught me not to judge a book by it’s cover, despite being a bit tattered, written on and has some spelling mistakes, the story was a good one!

Such a cool place. Rockford doesn’t get enough credit, in my opinion, for having a good restaurant scene, and places like this make a good case for more people to appreciate Rockford’s food options.
Great food, the portions are a bit small, but the prices are pretty low, so I don’t mind. They have a good craft beer list, though I do wish they offered more on tap.
Overall, I am a big fan.