Tucked away in a sleepy suburban industrial park is a brewery/restaurant that is creating a fun environment to enjoy craft beers and delicious takes on bar food. That place is Caboose Brewing Company, it’s located in Vienna, VA in what appears to be a quasi industrial park that has a trail paralleling it. The trail adds a real whimsical element to this place, because imagine you’re going for a walk or bike ride and you come upon this beer oasis serving up tasty drinks and food (they really promote this dream by the way, you’ll find numerous people with bikes coming and going).
Finding Caboose can be a challenge and that was by far the most annoying aspect of the entire dining experience, but with a little patience you’ll find the place as it’s tucked away in a corner of the parking lot. Parking is very tight, so they have a valet service that’s complimentary which alleviates any rage you may have over trying to park your car.
When you walk into the space you will notice that the folks at Caboose are attempting to go for the rougher industrial look, which I have always preferred. Adorning the walls are local artists paintings, which tend to veer towards modern and pop art, it makes for a fun dining experience. We arrived when some sort of local company’s team building event was going on, so the place was packed, despite that we were able to find a seat and begin our dining experience without delay.
Caboose’s food is built rooted in the farm to table ethos of having fresh local ingredients. The food itself is not dissimilar to what you’re seeing in many other high income modern restaurants which is fancy bar food. With items like fried chicken, mac & cheese, chicken pot pie, and burgers you quickly realize that this place is not exactly a brewery but also not exactly a restaurant either. To me it’s more of a brewery/bar that serves food, than an a actual restaurant (think tapas) which is fine with me as long as the food is good I don’t care. And thankfully for me, it was.
We started with the butcher plate of charcuterie and this was really a joy to eat. The chicken liver pate is smooth and flavorful, it pairs very well with the house made crackers that can sometimes border on the line of being too crunchy but they are still very good. If you’re not in the mood for a real meal, I recommend just ordering a butcher plate with a few cheeses and a beer, you’ll be very happy with your choice.
The star of the menu to me was the mac & cheese, which oddly enough is remarkably easy to screw up based on my experience eating at other high-end restaurants. They’ll often opt to use noodles that aren’t correct (i’m looking at you ziti) or they’ll use cheeses that aren’t creamy or sharp enough. Fortunately, Caboose’s mac & cheese is pornographically delicious (that’s right, it makes a sex in your mouth via your taste buds), it perfection and my only gripe was that it wasn’t enough!
We finished the meal with a dish I had high hopes for and it was pretty good but not spectacular, and that was the fried chicken with blue cornbread.
The fried chicken itself was delicious, perfectly seasoned and prepared just right so that when you bit into it you immediately had crunch but also juicy chicken flavor. My gripe with this was the blue cornbread, that was a total miss. The texture was fine, but the flavor was entirely too bland even for a non-sweet cornbread.
Overall Caboose is a great location to visit especially if you’re walking/biking along the trail, with attentive service the experience is inviting and enjoyable. The higher prices might scare some away, but being in such a high income location (i.e. northern VA) I think they will do fine (editors note: they are opening up another location in Reston at Mosaic so I think they’re doing just fine!)
Final Rating: B+
