OCCOQUAN, Va. — The Blue Arbor Café has spent 10 years in Occoquan, and after all of that time the restaurant has never used an oven.
“It’s all soups, salads, and sandwiches,” said owner Steve Power. “We don’t even have a flattop grill or microwave.”
As part of their anniversary celebration, the eatery will roll back prices of all of their sandwiches this weekend to what they cost 10 years ago – $7.50, including a side dish. That’s a $1.75 less than what they cost today.
And there will be music, too, from The Prince William Youth Orchestra, The Back Alley Blues, Mike Soule, and Ray Sheehan. And giveaways from small businesses in Occoquan, including an introductory scuba lesson from Patriot Scuba.
The tiny town has been a good home to the restaurant, and is home to a score of friendly shop owners.
“It’s kind of isolated from the rest of the sprawl and crawl of the rest of the area. It feels like a family here… all of the merchants are friendly and there is no fighting or competition happening amongst us,” said Powers.
He has, however, outgrown his small restaurant space and would someday like to expand to serve more customers.
“We can seat 28 people inside but if there is inclement weather we can’t keep up with the amount of people who want to eat here,” he said.
While Powers admits it’s a nice problem to have, he says he’d rather have a space that could accommodate about 70 guests.
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