Locally owned poke restaurant coming to downtown Rockford

July 17, 2025|By Kevin Haas|In Featured, Eat & Drink, News, 815 News, Local, Rock River Current, Rockford, Business, Top Stories, Restaurants

Yichu Yang, who is part of the ownership of Poke Green, is preparing to bring Poke Green Lite to the Stewart Square building in downtown Rockford. He’s pictured in front of the building on Wednesday, July 16, 2025. (Photo by Kevin Haas/Rock River Current)

Poke Green prepares to open its second location

By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — A locally owned restaurant that specializes in healthy poke bowls served quickly is expanding with its second location.

Poke Green Lite is preparing to open at 308 W. State St., suite 135, inside the Stewart Square building. It will be similar to the original Poke Green, which opened at 3053 N. Perryville Road in December 2023.

Poke Green fills what was Ripe Life Juice Co. and before that Bella Luna Bakery. Renovations to the space are underway now with a goal to open by September.

“We just want to bring a different kind of restaurant to downtown,” said Yichu Yang, part of the ownership of Poke Green. “I want to bring some new stuff in here and see how it goes, bring some change to the older district. I like it, and I hope everyone likes it.”

Yang said customers at the original Poke Green had asked him to consider opening closer to downtown, so they didn’t have to drive to Rockford’s east end for its poke bowls.

The menu will be a slightly scaled back version of the original Poke Green, with its focus on vegan and seafood options. It won’t have chicken or appetizers such as calamari and takoyaki that are at the original location. But it will have a larger variety of vegan bowls. There will also be different options including watermelon radish, pickled ginger and fish eggs.

Yang also plans to have a bowl of the month with seasonal produce to keep the menu fresh for customers.

He takes pride in Poke Green’s fresh, mostly organic produce and the high quality of fish used in its bowls. You can get bowls with sushi-grade salmon, tuna, shrimp, crab and eel. They’re topped with house-made sauces.

“We are using the really high-quality (fish),” Yang said. “Even though the price is going up, we still choose the higher quality fish. … It tastes better, it looks better and the customer can taste the difference.”

The sea bowl comes with freshly prepared salmon, tuna, eel, seaweed salad, mango, cucumber, lettuce and avocado topped with spicy mayo, poke and eel sauce. (Photo by Kevin Haas/Rock River Current)

If you’ve never had poke before, picture it as a form of sushi served over rice with a mix of fruit and vegetables.

The Sunnyside Bowl, for example, is filled with fresh salmon, tuna, seaweed salad, lettuce, cucumber, edamame, radish, carrot, and avocado. It’s topped with spicy mayo, poke and yum yum and ginger sauce.

Poke Green Lite has a small storefront with large windows looking out onto North Main Street. It will offer carryout and a limited space for seating inside the restaurant. There is also a common area for seating in the space between Poke Green Lite and Cantina Tacos.

“There is no menu like (Poke Green Lite’s) here downtown,” said Karen Hobbs, owner of KH Food Safety Consulting and Services. “I feel like this space was built for them. … I think he’s going to be enjoy being here in downtown and the community is going to enjoy having a new type of menu that they’ve never had here before.”