The Secret Garden Café, located in Occoquan, offers area residents a chance to relax patio-side and enjoy dishes made from scratch on the premises.
The café’s style is ‘gourmet comfort food’ according to Allison Dauksz, the café’s general manager. It was started in April 2013 by a husband and wife team that have since sold the establishment.
“It’s very quaint and comfortable. It’s a really great place…in the summertime we’ve got the patio, – it’s very romantic…Everybody likes to sit in the garden in the warm weather. The inside [of the restaurant] is an old 1800s house that has been refurbished. Lots of little nooks and crannies in the house – lots of old rooms to sit in. We have a nice old fireplace,” said Dauksz.
During the week, the Secret Garden Café offers dinner specials, and other special menus for holidays.
“We do a dinner for two special throughout the week. That is $32. Couples come, and they get a choice between three entrees, and those entrees switch every week. And they either get a starter of a cup of soup or a house salad, and then they share one of our house-made desserts,” commented Dauksz.
Additionally, the café offers a Sunday brunch. Dauksz recommended having a reservation for the brunch, as it’s a popular event at the café and tables fill quickly.
On their menu, some of the most popular items, according to Dauksz, are their Monte Cristo sandwich, their house-made filet salad, and their take on the popular southern fare of shrimp and grits.
“We actually sell [shrimp and grits] for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’s got a nice Cajun cream sauce with jumbo shrimp. And that’s got our homemade cheddar grit cake…it’s almost like a polenta cake where take the grits, and put cheddar cheese in them and then we pan-fry them, so it’s a little crispy on the inside and it’s got the nice warm, creamy grits in the middle. And that’s topped with our homemade corn salsa,” said Dauksz.
To give back to the community, the Secret Garden Café works with local charities and designates a day each month where they donate a portion of their profits to a charity.
“The first Friday of every month that we do, is a donation day…we pick different local charities, and 10% of our daily sales are actually donated to those local charities. [Within] these past couple of month’s we’ve done the Occoquan Historical Society, and that was really popular…and we also did some stuff with POW-MIA, and we also did Toys for Tots,” said Dauksz.
As the weather continues to warm up, it sounds like a good idea to grab a table on the patio at the Secret Garden Café and have dinner and drinks in Occoquan.
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