Mud Hen Tavern
Kaya Toast – Coconut Jam served open face on Toasted Bread with Soft Fried Egg and Dark Soy
Chicken and Waffle Croquettes – Bacon, Spicy Maple Sauce
Buffalo Potato Poppers – Warm Blue Cheese and Celery Ranch
Marguerita Pizza – Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce, Mozzarella, Fresh Basil
Pumpkin Ravioli – Shitake Mushroom, Truffle Oil, Garlic, Gruyere
Coffee and Donuts – Chocolate Coated Cake Donut, Espresso Cream, Coffee Anglaise
Owned and operated by Susan Feniger, a Toledo native like myself, and filling the old “Street” space just steps from Trois Mec, it was with some intrigue that myself and a friend entered Mud Hen Tavern for Happy Hour – a clever menu and bubbly, if somewhat overbearing, service filling the hour before dinner with hits and misses, both. Annoyingly described as ‘tapas’ when our waitress stated it was necessary to move us from patio to bar in order to enjoy a happy-hour menu not offered in the “main dining room” it seemed a strange choice considering the fact that the restaurant was never more than a quarter full, yet abiding by the policy we soon sat at a communal high top, an eventual order of a half dozen items coming together with only the worst of them receiving any discount from the disappointing menu for which we’d migrated. Beginning first with a few ‘signatures,’ it was in Kaya Toast alongside the clever Croquettes that our meal began and with both items trending quite sweet the opening act was admittedly quite strong, the dense jam juxtaposing salty soy particularly enthralling in the first while aromatic chicken sausage found its foil in buttery batter topped with Sriracha spiced maple syrup in the second. Moving next to a less successful duo, the $6 potato poppers were essentially four small nuggets of baked potato meant to replicated wings and although certainly lighter than the classic I’d have rather just had chicken, the quality of the bleu a lone standout and something I only wish would have been present on the flavorless thin-crust pizza, a half-off mess from happy hour that made me wonder if Chef Feniger had, in fact, raided my highschool cafeteria to crib their recipe note-for-note. Partially returning to form with delicate pasta that unfortunately suffered from too heavy a hand with truffle oil despite the creamy autumnal filling and mushrooms plus cheese that also would have benefitted the aforementioned pie, it was finally in dessert that we finished and although the summer peach variety listed on the website have now been replaced by coffee and cream, the rumors of excellent donuts remained true – the still-steaming butter-cake coated in chocolate sopping up a pool of chicory tinged anglaise from the bottom and vibrant espresso cream from above.
RECOMMENDED: Kaya Toast, Chicken and Waffle Croquettes, Donut.
AVOID: Pizza, Buffalo Potato Poppers.
TIP: Not particularly a bargain, even at happy hour, service here seems to thrive on the upsell and assumptions that all diners are dumb while they themselves cannot seem to take a hint, cocktails offered again and again (and again) while comments about the pizza were brushed aside without hardly an acknowledgement…odd for a place attempting to push a ‘community card’ with rewards for return visits on anyone who will listen.
http://www.mudhentavern.com/
