Inside Boca Grande’s historic train depot, The Loose Caboose
restaurant feels cool, smells like sweet cream, and is as richly paneled as any
Gilded Age waiting room--which it was until 1958, when the passenger train
stopped running. Once the place started dishing up ice cream, Katharine Hepburn
adored its chocolate; Laura Bush favors toasted coconut. Now co-owner Blanche Boudreau is whipping up
Indian pudding flavor for some Civil War reenactors, when the cell phone on the
counter buzzes.
“We got a call, Blanche,” says chef-owner Jacques
Boudreau.
Blanche doesn’t miss a beat, waves in a helper, picks up the
phone. “Where is it? … OK, I’ll be right there.”
When she gets back home, she’ll likely be covered with
slime, scrapes, or bird lice from one of her messier jobs—rescuing dogs,
wildlife, and, now, humans.
See, “the Loose” has become a means to far more selfless ends
than ice cream.
On this wealthy island retreat where even wild sea
grapes are manicured like boxwood hedges, the Boudreaus are saving Southwest
Florida one life at a time—personally and with spaghetti-and-meatballs benefits.
