Local Flavor in Illinois

3 places

Entertainment·Ogle County
Aldo's Pizzeria
Aldo's has been making pizza on Lincoln Highway in Rochelle, by the family's own count, since 1979, which in the restaurant trade is several lifetimes. Aldo Iorio's name is on the sign and the family's on the business, which grew into a two room arrangement: the pizzeria and family dining room on one side and the Red Brick Pub alongside it.
Entertainment·Ogle County
Country School Restaurant
The Country School is a Rochelle institution of the drive in kind, a fast food restaurant on North 7th Street that has, by its own count, been frying chicken since the 1970s. The name misleads visitors looking for a schoolhouse: it is a restaurant, and the schoolhouse is only a name.
Industry & Science·Ogle County
Kennay Farms Distilling
The Kennay family has farmed in Illinois for six generations, and in 2019 it started turning some of the harvest into whiskey. Kennay Farms Distilling is what the farm to table idea looks like applied to spirits: the grain is grown, selected and harvested on the family's own ground outside Rochelle, then milled, fermented and distilled by the family itself, a sequence the trade calls grain to glass and which very few distilleries actually do end to end.