Colonel Mustard's Sandwich Emporium — Restaurant in Colorado Springs

First off, some of these reviews are unverified. They have 1 or 2 reviews people and bots. Search the complaints and you'll understand this is a boutique restaurant for people with extra money, not a sandwich joint. It's obscure/niche.

I've had food here 3 times. The last 2 times seemed to make me sick. I threw out most the second sandwich, and ate the third. The first time I had a sandwich here it was okay. I belive it made me sick because it was undercooked including the 'top notch' bread. I'm a bad cook and my own sandwiches do better, that's disappointing. The third was passable as food but not great either. I'm not sure what is supposed to happen or who likes this. The perceived value of the quality ingredients and high price might be blinding people to the middle-of-the-road taste. Additionally, the overall quantity is low.

Just because a sandwich is made with handpicked ingredients and put together well, doesn't make it particularly better.

As one could expect the hoity toity response from the owners adds to the understanding this is a restaurant for the rich who don't care about quality, not a representation of Colorado Springs, far from it. Even the Broadmore has much better meals for close to the same price. Last time I ate at The Broadmore it costed 34$ for my meal, but it was much better, and more filling. I would suggest, some cheaper filler ingredients like locally sourced chips you can sell for cheap, to bring up the value margin on the overall meal.

I highly recommend saving your money at a slightly cheaper joint like up the road there is good brisket, or spending just a few more bucks at a high end restaurant that does the whole shebang, like the Bistro down the road (60-120$ per meal) or Broadmore area restaurants.

Unfortunately they also charged me a CC fee when I paid cash card. The CC fee was eventually refunded but doesn't make sense in the first place.

Hogshead wrapper on the cheesesteak, that's how you know this is a legitimate review. You'd have to eat there to know that. Some of the 5 star reviews have no tangible evidence they ate there or exist.

Lol there are even reviews that say" good vegetarian options, the vegetarian dishes were delicious " and then proceed to say, "recommend dishes: meat, more meat, poltry, other meat" what kind of human recommends the vegetarian options, but also the others at the same time??? This is how you know they...

I’ll start with the good because this place deserves it. Mustard’s is an overall fantastic sandwich spot and welcomed addition to the Colorado Springs food scene.

Things we loved: The menu is fantastic and there are so many things I’m eager to go back and try. My wife is celiac and they really go above and beyond to take care of her. For a sandwich place with bread everywhere, this is very appreciated. The care and kindness of the staff was evident in every person we interacted with.

Taking it from good to great (in all fairness, these are mostly specific to the gluten free eaters out there): First and foremost, this is the cardinal sin of bacon in my opinion: Bacon should always be crispy. Unfortunately, our bacon was soft and flimsy on the sandwich. Maybe there is someone out there that prefers it this way, but in my experience crispy bacon literally makes or breaks a club sandwich. Would love to see this improved next time we check it out. While I appreciate that they are trying to support local businesses, Outside The Breadbox unfortunately does not have good gf sandwich bread. It falls apart and breaks easily. Maybe consider another local to Colorado brand like Canyon Bakehouse or Kim and Jake’s? They both offer top tier bread options. While OTB does many things good, I would not say their sandwich bread is one of them. If for some reason OTB is the only option for gf bread, perhaps just cutting the sandwich in half would be a simple solution for making it more manageable. When it came to their signature sauce on the Officer’s Club, we were not told it was not gluten free when ordering. Instead, they just omitted any sauce altogether. This made for a dry sandwich and after asking for other sauce options it turned out there were many available. It seems the signature sauce could easily be modified to be gluten free (I was told it was because of soy sauce, which is easily available in gf varieties). However, if that is a change they don’t want to make, it would have been nice to have been given other sauce options at the register, instead of just not telling us it would be omitted.

Keep up the good work! Would love to see any of these small things improved to really elevate things to...

Colonel Mustard's Sandwich Emporium might not seem impressive - or even open - when you pull into the parking lot. It's located in a little strip mall, and when we arrived, the blinds were closed. My mom genuinely thought the place was closed. However, as soon as we opened the door, the rich atmosphere of this sandwich shop hit us like a wall! Many customers already sat at their tables, chowing down. The walls are painted a nice yellow - not a yellow color that induces unpleasant feelings by any means. In a corner is a massive display of 100+ mustards, all available for purchase. Another corner boasts a fridge with various deserts that appear to be homemade (judging by the unlabeled packaging) - including mini cakes, pies, and other honey-enhanced treats. A large bread storage container sits next to the fridge, below the wall menu. I always enjoy when the food ingredients are out where they customers can see them - it forces a certain quality of hygiene on the business. The writing on the menu was small and hard to read. I took out my phone, zoomed in, and was fine. They had some business merch up on the wall - shirts, sweaters, etc. The line was to the door (4 people ahead of us), but the food was well worth the wait. It took them a hot minute, but since the kitchen is right in plain sight, I could see they were constantly busy preparing food before us until they prepared our food. I gave 4 stars for service because we still waited around 10 minutes for our 4 subs. Honestly, they seemed understaffed - one more kitchen employee would have effectively shortened our wait time.

We were fortunate enough to speak with the owner for a minute. She said she opened this hole-in-the-wall during the COVID - 19 Pandemic, to which knowledge I applauded her effort. She was quite busy they whole time we were there, but she spared her valuable time to entertain our questions.

I can't remember what I ordered (as I posted this review 3 weeks late), but I remember the sandwiches being better than Firehouse Subs (my favorite sub place) with a distinct heartier and homemade ring to them. Like the difference between buying a birthday cake from King Soopers and baking your own...