Vintage @ 501 — Restaurant in Rockford Township

Vintage 501 was the caterer for our wedding at Midway Village in September. To say that we are dissatisfied with the service that the owner, Matt, provided to us is quite the understatement. Our wedding was nothing but an afterthought and Matt was extremely underprepared and unprofessional. Per our request, we stressed several times that we did not want to chance running out of food at some point during the course of the evening. We were charged a certain amount per person and we even went above and beyond our total guest count in order to account for this. However, after our reception had concluded, we realized that OVER 25 GUESTS did not receive a portion of meat with their dish. It has been brought to our attention that Matt was well aware of the shortage of food and chose to do nothing about it. We have also been informed that Matt and his staff were extremely rude and inconsiderate to numerous of our wedding guests. My husband and I met with Matt a few days before our wedding, and we were told that water, tea, coffee and soda would be free of charge to our guests during the reception. It was extremely disheartening to us when we discovered that Matt had been charging for these items at the bar. Charging for these items, especially since we had ALREADY PAID FOR THEM, is completely unacceptable. These circumstances have made for an extremely poor reputation of Matt and his business, not only to us, but every single one of our wedding guests as well. My husband and I have reached out to Matt via email to try and amend the situation at hand. Unfortunately, Matt has chosen not to respond to us. As a business owner myself, I know what it takes to run a successful business, which is why I am even more disappointed in him and his character. I STRONGLY recommend taking your business elsewhere, especially when it comes to catering. It is my hope that, by sharing our negative experience, this won't happen to any individuals again in the future. Especially not another...

The other night we stopped in this place for a drink before dinner. What a disaster. We walked in and were met with a disgusting smell of stale food and bleach. It smelled like The morning after at a college bar. There was a concert going on later that evening at the Coronado so it was a little busy, but there were three or four empty tables. It said to seat your self so we found a dirty table and sat there. There were two servers walking around, and neither one of them made eye contact with us. After 20 minutes, we went up to the bar and ordered our own drinks. I ended up getting a lemon drop, which wasn’t bad, although I would have felt safer getting a bottled drink. At one point we greeted one of the servers ourselves and asked how she was doing. She didn’t look well. Like, seriously something was wrong. The other one looked more chipper, but continued to avoid our gaze. We finally dumped all the dirty stuff from our table onto another dirty table. The sick server continued to float around cleaning up tables but never approached us. As we were leaving I walked by the chipper server and said “ it’s OK that you ignored us”. They tried to make some excuse but I didn’t hear what they said. This place is absolutely disgusting. Go anywhere else on state street...

While on vacation we passed thru & stayed overnight in Rockford, IL. Desiring a popular local spot to eat, we came across Vintage @ 501. It is located in the historic downtown area directly across from the stylish, art deco City Hall. I'm not sure what vintage means to you, but if it's a slightly worn & dark sports bar w large ad signs of a bygone era, or paper menus that are now wrinkled w repeated use, or at my table the little extra effort needed to pry my phone from the sticky surface, this place might tick off the boxes. But Vintage @ 501 is known for their food and the menu has a lot to choose from. We were excited to find the Beef Brisket Plate, and then to split it. We made an outstanding choice! The large helping of mashed potatoes, butter glazed beans & brisket shared between the two of us made for a filling and pleasing meal for both. I thought the slow roasted brisket was especially tender and tasty especially with the Cabernet reduction gravy covering it. My wife enjoyed her meal, but noticed the absence of carrots as described on the menu and thought the green beans could be helped by adding salt. By the end of our meal, "vintage" had taken on a new meaning: delicious home-cooked, comfort food w the one you love...