Depot Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Faribault

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In my humble opinion.. I believe no other restaurants I have experienced in my 63 years comes close to the prepared and plated food, flavors, service, prices and environment we experienced tonight at the Faribault Depot Bar and Grill, as provided by NYC trained Pro Culinary Chef, Jeff LaBaeu.

We found Jeff’s articulated culinary knowledge and passion to be amazing.

After doing some research for a restaurant to share a birthday dinner tonight.. we decided to make the trip from a southern Mnpls suburb area. 35W South was a short quick 40 mile trip down to Faribault. Turned out to be worth every mile we traveled. Nice scenic actually. No traffic with lots of cool rural sights.

This unique restaurant (remodeled Faribault railroad depot) is located in the historic eastern downtown Faribault business district next to the Straight river and world famous Faribault Cheese Caves. Trains still occasionally run the rails just next to the restaurant and river. We found the Depot to be a very unique super cool place both inside and out.

I consider our experience tonight to be an elite level of restaurant food quality and flavors complimented by excellent service.

The Depot menu really runs the gamut. From the best looking burgers meals we seen served.. to the elite level of fine dining plated offerings we experienced. Pricing is definitely less than what I typically see from the decent cookie-cutter metro restaurants… and certainly far less expensive than those considered to be “fine” dinning restaurants. I was very impressed that the Depot seems to have it all.

To end my raving over our experience, I would proudly give the Depot a double 5 star rating across the board. No question. Best overall restaurant dining experience I have had yet in my 63 years! Definitely be back soon.. Likely even this weekend. Next trip will include a Rice County lakes scenic...

Very cool building in a nice location. Decided to try a different local(ish) place based on those two qualities. Service was very good and fast, but I was almost immediately put off that water and soft drinks are served in a plastic cup. The cheese curds were great the rest of the food was really bad. I had the blackened chicken breast sandwich, which is nothing more than a chicken breast between a bun.. no lettuce, no tomato, no onion, nothing just a chicken breast.. garnished with kosher pickles. Seasoned mayo on the side. The seasoning was good, but just chicken on a bun is dry. With the chicken I chose onion rings. Traditionally rings are dipped in a batter that is flaky when fried, instead the batter was more like a biscuit mix which created a dense spongy foam feel to the rings and sits like a brick in the stomach. On the other side if the table, she chose the filet mignon. I have only once seen a steak served without a steak knife (inside security at an airport) but you should be able to cut a filet with a butter knife, but she struggled. She ordered it medium rare, and it was closer to medium. It was chewy and lacked any flavor, not even a hint of salt or pepper. Her summary was "quite possibly the worst steak I have ever had". So, we order dessert which is okay, chocolate lava cake which did not feature the center "lava" fudge that it is known for. With dessert she ordered coffee, which was room temperature when it got to the table. Our chefs name was proudly displayed on the chalk board 20 feet from out table, I will not print their name as it is unprofessional March 8th 2020. After just shy of $90 (with tip) for a terrible meal, two adults will not...

We have went to the Depot many times but last night (Saturday 2/8) was the worsed of any restaurant I've ever went to and will not be back. It started with a few questions to the staff but they had no idea and didn't ever try to find out the answer like asking another employee. Our waitress we had to repeat what we wanted to order to her. I feel she was overwhelmed and had to many customers that no one got great customer service. I received my bacon cheeseburger and fries. After a couple bites, I realized the burger had no bacon on it. I had to track the waitress down, she thought that was so funny and laughed and laughed. I thought we would get a little off the bill or something since I only received part of order, no bacon for this overpriced burger. My friend ordered the texas dip which came with 2 slices of very thin white bread and potato chips way overpriced. This was probably the fifth time we've been to the Depot. I'm 66 and can that I've have never wrote a review before but I was really shocked by how bad everything was from the time we walked in until we left. No one in the place seemed to know anything. They won't miss us of course but we won't be...