Oscar’s Pub & Grill

We stay in Rockford every few weeks on business and look forward to Oscars every time. They have plenty of parking. I love the home-​made potato chips. The video gaming is great! We usually come out ahead. We always order for carry-​out and nothing is ever missing when we get back to our hotel.

I love coming to Oscar’s when I’m back home visiting the parentals. Granted, it is not a place where you come for the ambiance, but the drinks are cheap and food is great. They’ve pretty darn good drink and food specials. Their chicken wings are surprisingly pretty damn good and so is their cobb salad. Yeah, I said it, a cobb salad at a bar is mighty tasty. They boast a 8 feet build your own bloody mary bar on Sundays, which I keep missing since it is only available from 10:30a-12:30p. I wished they extended it longer since I always end up missing it. I will make sure to visit earlier so I can update this review next time.

20 minutes and no service when it’s at ¹⁄₃ capacity. 2 servers ignored us. Very rude and unprofessional

We ordered take out walleye fish fry, potatoes, coleslaw & sweet tator tots with a side of a 55 gallon of tartar sauce!!! Delicious!!!

My husband and I stopped here for a couple drinks before we had to leave town, and it was a good decision. The bartender, Jason, was very nice, answering our questions about Rockford and the bar. It was nice to know that it was still family owned, and Jason had actaully known the family for a long time. The place was clean, served cold beer, so we were happy! We will be back if we are ever in the area again.

I have mixed feelings about this place. The food is generally pretty good, and the wait staff at night is pretty good. The lunch staff kinda sucks though. I visited today for lunch, and had the walleye. It was tasty enough but was ruined by the hairs I found in my food. Plural. Hair in my salad and my tartar sauce. Yuck. Instead of having a manager apologize or anything, which I would consider to be the norm when you have a food safety issue, she just brought a new salad. My previous visit I sat and waited to order and for refills while the entire wait staff sat at the bar eating and chatting. Pretty disappointed as this was one of my favorite places to stop by…

Saturday night: 8PM.
We were meeting a group there, and they were accommodating several groups overall that night plus others. They take reservation, which is nice given that they were packed. The only ding I will give it, and it’s a small one, is that most of the tables are High Tops, and circle, which makes larger groups just a little bit annoying.
Second minor quibble, the bathrooms aren’t as clean as I would like, but they aren’t dirty… Also, kinda small given the size of the place, only 2 urinals and 1 stall… (for the men)
Our Server was named Randi. Randi was AWESOME! She has scored the biggest tip I think we have ever left at an establishment because she was just so amazing, so on top of it, and her attention to detail was bar none.
This Randi, in case there are others, is this petite little girl, with the «white/​blond» look. Her attention to detail was amazing, and if your local and reading this, just stop… Call in, see if she is available, and go head there now. Once your sitting in her station, you can continue on with this review.
1.) We checked out the menu, it’s fairly standard bar food, nothing above the wall crazy and all the prices perfectly reasonable. The ordering was done all at one shot, other than our drink refills, to allow us to mingle with our group, and allow Randi to be effective with her time.
2.) The order is as follows
4 Rum Buckets (we had ours made with Vodka, and OMG OMG OMG they were good. I think we sold about half a dozen more at our table because of our 4)
2 regular drinks
Regular nacho skins (customized to have onions and peppers on the side)
crispy shrimp dinner (freshly hand battered, I believe tempura)
baked potato (shrimp dinner side)
mac n cheese (shrimp dinner side)
Mushroom and swiss burger
Sweet Potato tots (burger side)
Total with tax 68.52 — Our tip was close to 50 percent, because she was that damn good! We tipped her 31.48 (bringing the total to 100 dollars with tax/​tip)
Now as to how she earned this tip, and how the place earned an overall glowing review.
The rum buckets were ordered thru the statement of my girlfriends. «I want something fruity with alcohol, the rum bucket was suggested by Randi, and my GF swapped the rum for Vodka. These rum buckets were priced at 6.50 each. I found them to be a great deal at this price.
Our skins were yummy, delivered with the appropriate modifications, and there are four very nice sized skins per order.
Given that I have my bariatric procedure, I typically share with people. So we made mention that myself and a friend were sharing when we placed the order. We ordered the burger, and the sweet potato tots.
The burger was good, and cooked medium rare as we had asked. Quite juicy and yummy, and certainly enjoyed every bite. The sweet potato tots were glazed slightly as well, but could be finger eaten, and were very delicious.
Now mega huge brownie point, without being asked, Randi split the order of tots, and cut the burger in half presenting us each with out own plate. This has not been done very often at all without actually asking at a restaurant so this was a very nice touch indeed.
My GF had the crispy shrimp dinner. I believe the shrimp to be hand battered and tempura style. The breading was reminiscent of sweet and sour chicken. We shared a few of the shrimp between the three of us, while my GF enjoyed the baked potato, and we all had at least a bite of the mac and cheese.
The mac and cheese appears to also be home-​made, or at least of high quality, because unlike «fake» mac n cheese, this stuff was hardening as we left it for too long, before finishing it, or trying to take it to go. The mac and cheese was very hearty and quite tasty.
Randi kept up on all of our drinks promptly, and was an absolute pleasure. I am not a rockford local, but I can see myself making the drive, just to have the food, and especially Randi being our server again.

Worst bar in Rockford. I go here as little as possible because the waitresses suck. I was here with two friends once and we were completely ignored. The waitress would ask if we needed a drink, we would order, shed drop the drinks off and not come back.
We had to keep getting up and asking the bartender for our drinks. When we didnt tip well because the service sucked she gave us a dirty look. The manager then came over and started questioning us on how they could provide better service.
Never in my life have I had a manager come over and question my tip on a bill. I understand she was trying to inquire about how to provide better service, but it should be understood that the waitress wasn’t doing something right. Obviously it was because she wasn’t tentative. What the hell else would it be? It’s not rocket science to provide good customer service.
The drinks weren’t made well either. They tasted like we were drinking water. We had to get up and ask the bartender to remake our drinks because of the fact they cheaper out and because of the fact that the waitress dropped the drink off and never came back.

I love the all you can eat walleye. We come here a lot, but just left because of slow service. We were not at the bar, but at a table. Usually it’s great, but tonight was the second time we left due to poor service, and the place was basically empty to oscars standards. May want to train new waitresses on basic drinks. All of the food is usually great… especially the fish. Tonight, however, they lost our business.

This updated review is long overdue. Oscar’s has changed a lot since my first review. I went from barely going to being almost a regular there. The interior atmosphere has changed. They got rid of the fish tank and the fake fish hanging from the ceiling. The crowd has changed a lot too. It’s now a bit more of an older more settled crowd.
The food here is pretty good. One of favorite to snack on items is the cheese curds. They’re just really good. I’ve had multiple burgers and sandwiches there and why it’s nothing to brag about, they were better than average. What I really like is coming here for Football. It’s great! They have a lot of TVs and the games will be on different ones. Then you can get one of their wireless speakers for your table so that if your team isn’t the one they have the sound turned on to, you can still hear it. BONUS! They have different specials during the week and themed parties. We went to a Zombie Prom themed party the other night just had a blast.
The service can be hit or miss, just like a lot of places. They have their good waitresses and their less than stellar ones. We have our favorites. I’m not going to say who because I really don’t want everyone coming in hogging them!
So Yea, Oscar’s made some changes and I need to give them a couple of extra stars for the adjustments.

Great burgers. Cool environment. Great place to watch a game. But Beware of the sweet potato tots and bad Djs.

We went for dinner on a Saturday afternoon which happened to be during the $ ⁴⁄₁₀ wings hours. It was me, my hubby, and another couple… a table of four. We ordered 10 of the Jamaican Jerk and 10 of the Bourbon Glazed bone-​in wings. Wow! Let me tell you, those jerk wings were authentic tasting (we’ve been to Jamaica 4 times), and just the right kick! The bourbon ones were also amazing, not hot and nicely glazed. We all ordered the Prime Rib sandwich. This is also to die for smothered in provolone cheese, onions, mushrooms and horseradish sauce. Really generous portions and endless fries. Those lightly battered fries were also so good, I ordered a second portion. Of course, I had most of them, half of my sandwich, and a few wings to take home.
The only reason I’m not giving Oscar’s 5 stars is the mishap with our meal. The waitress came out one entrée short, and my friend waited about 15 minutes for hers to come out. Apparently, they didn’t have enough prime rib ready for all four of us. Rather than delaying all of us, someone decided to go ahead and serve the three and let the fourth sit without a meal. We received no apology for this. It worked out as we had ordered the same thing. I simply cut mine in half for her, and we shared. The when the same friend order her drink refill, rootbeer was given to her rather than cola. She does NOT like rootbeer. Again, no apology. So for service purposes, I had to remove a star. She seemed new. Perhaps that was the issue.
I definitely recommend this pub & grill for the food. It was scrumptuous!

Friday night dinner time crowd was pretty chill, a few rowdies. I got the bluegill dinner with sweet potato tots, grilled veggies and garlic bread, the man got the BBQ pulled pork and fries. Everything was an A+. Cute waitresses, super polite and efficient and the last time I had fish that good was when I was growing up in michigan and we caught it ourselves and grandpa cut it up and fried it up within hours of catching it. Sweet potato tots were a unique surprise. I hate tater tots and the man hates sweet potatoes and we both scarfed them down. There regular fries were nicely beer battered and super crispy :-) price wasn’t bad at all for what you got.

I love Oscar’s. I always end up having a great time whether its on a busy Saturday or a low key weekday. It’s a great place to go out on the weekends cuz I love dancing and they have a dance floor with good hits. It’s also a cool place to hang out though and not just like a club. I’ve never had the food here bit I’ve heard its pretty good.

A huge bar with a place for dj/​band. I go for the fish fry. Two pieces of walleye, garlic bread and two sides for $ 7.50. Oscar’s used to include a salad as a side, now its a buck extra. Still a good deal. Good beer selection too. Service is friendly.

Better than the club down the street…
This place was great… I’m guessing this was one of the only hottest bars in Rockford. It had alot of people on Saturday night. It was a bit crowded but it was not bad. The DJ and music was great. Security was a bit strict… he stop all the asian girls for a while because we all look so young. But we still got in. Staff was very nice and provided great service.

It’s a typical, party bar. Lots of fun, cute girls, and lady gaga blaring. It can get way too crowded sometimes especially on saturdays. It’s got a great smoking area though, a heated outdoor spot with televisions.

Best rueben in town. Fish fry is super salty. Go for lunch though, otherwise you’ll be battling bros and wannabe sorority girls for a spot to sit.

Great place, typically a fun time every night.
Can get really crowded on the weekend and yes, there will be a line out the door on Friday and Saturday nights.
Food is good and the drinks are not spendy.