Roscoe hosts first-ever Restaurant Week to celebrate local food scene

“Rockford has their own version. Roscoe has their version now,” said Miralem Botic, of Mary’s Market Cafe & Bakery.

Mary’s Market is one of seven local restaurants participating in the celebration of local food.

“A local business is the one that’s going to be sponsoring your kid’s soccer teams or baseball teams. We give back to the community. We work here. We live here. We enjoy our time here. So it’s just more a tight-knit community. When you support small local businesses,” Botic said.

Louie’s Tap House is also participating with a new menu.

“It’s brought in a lot of business, and we just had a new menu drop recently. So getting the community involved in that has been really fun,” said Serena Ahlquist. “I think it’s always super important to support the local businesses around here, so just having the community involved and having the city involved and I think it’s all just really special.”

“An event like this is not just for the businesses, it’s also for the community, that’s again, getting to know each other, the community getting to know the businesses, the business owners in town, and also for the businesses to get to know the community here. You know, we love serving the people here in our school right in South Beloit. You know, we get people from all around the area stopping in. So it’s just really a great way to strengthen the community as a whole,” Botic said.

Restaurant Week runs April 11th through April 19th.

Participating restaurants include:

• Firehouse Pub
• Jessica’s Restaurant
• Louie’s Tap House
• Mary’s Market
• Poison Ivy Pub
• Sophia’s Restaurant
• Whiskey Hotel Barbecue