Caboose — Restaurant in Rutledge

I stood in line to order as the cashier Molly (who is also the owner I think) gave the person in front of me their change (cash). After that I ordered a snow cone. Molly began making it with NO GLOVES and did not wash her hands after touching money. Then proceeded to PACK THE TOP OF THE SNOW CONE WITH HER BARE HANDS 🤢 I ignored it because well, it’s a small local business and I don’t like to be a Karen. I never want to cause problems. Once she was finished making my snow cone she said it’ll be $2 and I pulled out my debit card. Her entire demeanor and attitude changed. She said “that’s all you got?” I said “yes ma’am” and she got very frustrated. She said, you don’t keep 2 bucks in your pocket? And started raising her voice. I apologized and said she could charge me a service fee, because I’m assuming she was upset that i was paying for such a small order by card. She said she didn’t know How to do that and could I buy something else I said okay.. and she said “here want a cookie?” And slammed it on the counter. She then tried to enter the cookie charge into the credit card machine and slammed her hands down on the counter (LOUDLY) stating “HERE. just take it. I can’t figure out how to charge it on the machine” I was scolded for simply trying to pay with a debit card. Also, there are NO signs posted saying there’s a debit card limit. Or that cash is preferred. I walked out in tears and will never be back. This was my first experience at the caboose and it was horrendous. It’s awful that Molly thinks she can treat people how she treated me Today. Avoid this restaurant at all costs if you don’t want to be yelled at and also served...

A pleasant surprise. Mr. Markley, the owner of C&J Orchards recommend The Caboose, and we weren't disappointed. By the way, C&J Orchards, just outside of Rutledge, is the place for the best peaches around.

Anyway, The Caboose is in downtown Rutledge and not hard to find. It really is in an old caboose, and it's bigger inside than it looks. There's indoor and outdoor seating available. We sat inside at a 1950s Formica and chrome table with newly recovered vinyl and chrome chairs.

The food is very reasonably priced, and very good. My wife had the Engineer sandwich, made with bacon, avocado, tomato, lettuce, and mayo on 9-grain bread. I had the BLT, which is essentially an Engineer without the avocado. Both were excellent and priced at around $5.50 each. We split a locally-made root beer. That was excellent. It was flavorful, smooth, creamy, with bubbles as soft as velvet. It brought back memories of the local root beers of my youth in the 1950s.

We were pretty full afterwards, but we had to sample the locally-made peanut butter cake, with chocolate icing. The slice looked as big as 3 slices in most other places; the cake was moist and peanut-buttery; and the icing was like chocolate fudge. We couldn't finish the whole slice, so save room for the cake.

We had the whole lot for under $20.00! I recommend The Caboose highly, and be sure to stop at C&J Orchards while you're...

This place is amazing. Awesome burgers, fun sno-cones, delicious blondies... and you can get any of their sandwiches on a salad. These ladies deal with a constant stream of traffic, but they remember us over the years! Great food. Great people.

**They do seem to prefer cash over card on small purchases, like if we only get sno-cones...

Last time we went, there was part of a red plastic closure for a bread bag in my salad that I discovered a few bites in. When I bit down, I thought I'd chipped a tooth. Didn't mention it to staff because it didn't change the taste of the salad at all, but I was done eating after that scare.

The time before that, when we got sno-cones, we noticed that there were black flecks in the ice on our way home, and decided we probably needed to pitch them rather than finishing them. Bummer, because the sno-cones are awesome.

The fries are not great. They're not salted at all, and they're not crispy at all. It's almost like they're boiled and then cubed and browned in the oven for a few minutes??? They taste more like something you might get with breakfast than any fries...