The lady who cuts my hair has been telling me about a place up in the small town of Donahue (population approximately 350 - and that may be stretching it) located north and west of Davenport that has some pretty good food. Her daughter has been a server there off and on during her years at North Scott High School and she always talked glowingly about the food out there. On a rainy Sunday earlier this year, my wife and I set out to go out the this place called The Depot.
The building that houses The Depot was exactly that at one time. The building served as Donahue's train depot in the late 1800's into the early 1900's. It was then when the Keppy family - who had been running the general store in Donahue since 1883 - took over the building for their business. The Keppy General Store was the central gathering place for people in and around Donahue for years. The place sold everything from leather shoes and rubber galoshes, smoked cod and penny candy, and bicycles and shotgun shells. People could buy coal from the basement in Keppy's General Store. The original Donahue Savings Bank was located in the front of the store back in the 1930's, and up until a few months before third generation owners David and Charlotte "Chuck" Keppy closed the store in 1992, they ran a regular egg route for people around northern Scott County.
Sam Fentress and his wife, Penny Callison, always liked to cook. Fentress cooked for the Davenport Fire Department for years, while Penny was a wonderful cook on her own. Both liked to use locally grown produce for their dishes and they thought they could translate their love for cooking into a restaurant. They found that the former depot/general store in Donahue was available and there wasn't really a sit-down eatery for miles around. They didn't necessarily want to have a bar that served bar food, but more of a fresh ingredient restaurant that just happened to have a bar. Fentress and Callison bought the building in 2013, and after some renovations they opened The Depot in 2014. In one of the corners of the restaurant, they added home supplies, snacks and treats as a nod to the original Keppy General Store.
It was just starting to rain heavily when we pulled up to The Depot in Donahue. (see map) We walked into the place to find a combination bar area/dining room that featured a number of railroad-type paraphernalia with nearly a dozen flat screen televisions around the room. There were a number of low-top tables with banquette seating along the wall with high-top tables in the middle.
The bar area featured a wood and mirrored back wall with five flat screen televisions mounted at the top. I immediately thought this would be a great place to come to for a football or basketball Saturday or Sunday with multiple games going on at the same time. The place was clean and very comfortable.
Behind the dining area was an addition that is used for parties or overflow dining. It featured both wood and brick walls with pine supports in the middle of the room. A large garage door opened to the outside for larger gatherings. It appeared that there had been a party in there the night before as there were still remnants of cookers, party tables and a few decorations left over. But it was still a pretty nice area for a reception or gathering.
My wife and I sat at a high-top table in the center of the main dining area and one of the young ladies who were serving that day gave us a couple menus to look over. They had a small selection of craft beers on tap, but they did have the Big Grove Easy Eddie Hazy IPA that I've grown fond of over the past few months.
As I said, owners Fentress and Callison are into fresh ingredients for their food and they try to source many of the items locally. Main entrees include a pot roast dinner, a meat loaf plate, and a country fried steak meal. They have a number of sandwiches and burgers on the menu - or you can "build-your-own" if you like. Appetizers include the regulars - chicken wings (bone-in or boneless), nachos, beer-battered mushrooms, and something called "Railroad Ties" that are potato wedges topped with bacon bits and a cheese sauce. They serve a full breakfast at The Depot on Saturday morning from 9 to 11 a.m., and they also have a Hispanic lady by the name of Sofia who works in the kitchen who has come up with special Mexican food entrees on some nights. (The lady who cuts my hair says the Mexican nights at The Depot are "to die for".)
I had pretty much zoned in on one thing - the "build-your-own" burger. I went with my standard burger with sautéed mushrooms, pepper jack cheese and bacon. They have onion rolls available with the burgers at The Depot, so I put the burger on that. The burger featured a 1/3 pound flat-grilled patty and the onion roll was lightly toasted. I also got a side of their onion rings to go along with the burger.
My wife ended up getting the cilantro lime sandwich without the bun. The chicken sandwich came with two slices of bacon, pepper jack cheese, deep-fried avocado slices and was topped with a chipotle mayo sauce. For her side she got The Depot's unique deviled egg that they've become somewhat famous for. I gave her one of my onion rings so she could try it out. She absolutely loved her grilled chicken breast. She especially loved the fried avocado slices on top. It was a lot for her to eat and it was a pretty large and rich-tasting serving.
I really enjoyed my burger. It was juicy and flavorful, and the beef was good enough that the toppings didn't mask the full taste of the beef patty. The onion bun held together with all that was going on with the burger. It was nice and soft, just as I like my burger buns. The onion rings also weren't that bad. I don't think they were made in-house, but they were still pretty good. I think one of the reasons why my wife had trouble finishing her grilled chicken breast was that she ate about half of my onion rings. But I was fine with that - I was concentrating on the burger.
We lingered a little longer than we wanted because there were torrential rains coming down outside. That was no problem with us as I grabbed another Big Grove Easy Eddie and we watched baseball on one of the televisions while we waited for the rain to let up. On the way home, we ran into areas where creeks had overflowed into farm fields from the heavy rains. But that was the story of our spring in Eastern Iowa - we had a lot of rain and the fields were pretty much saturated by that time.
My wife and I love finding little places out in the middle of nowhere like The Depot. It's a bit of a haul from out house - about a 25 minute drive - but it was worth it to finally get out there to try the place out. I enjoyed my burger and my wife thoroughly liked her cilantro lime chicken breast with the fried avocados. They seemed to have an extensive enough menu for anyone to find something they liked, but their craft beer selection was pretty limited. The service was good and friendly, the place was clean and welcoming, and this is a place that we'll definitely be back to at some point. We really want to try their Mexican nights sometime and we've subscribed to their Facebook page so we can find out when they'll have them.
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