Mueller's Bistro & Bakery — Restaurant in Hot Springs

UPDATE: Boy was I called out for posting this later on here 😅 So I respected the owners and decided to try this place in person so I could give them another shot and leave a new review based on my newest experience. That being said, I really had high hopes and wanted to love this establishment. Well here goes. Entering the restaurant, there was a small dining area to the left, kitchen straight ahead and the dessert/check out counter to my right with no employees to be seen for a minute so I checked out the cookies and treats in the glass cases. Sadly the kolaches looked the same as my first time trying it so I was dissuaded on retrying that. When someone appeared and asked how to help I mentioned we would be dining in and they went to clean a table before getting us. It’s a very small, quaint dining room with a handful of tables. Service was fine but sadly, the food was still very disappointing for us. Again, I decided to give the breakfast platter a go, plus the soup of the day (chicken gnocchi), French toast, and the Cor-talian sandwich. With the platter, this time trying the toast, bacon with eggs and home fries, I mean it was nothing to write home about sadly. The bacon was incredibly hard and crispy, toast was okay (it was my friends favorite part), home fries were just taters without the “home” in em and needed all the table seasonings, and eggs were a lil over cooked for our liking. Going off my first try of this platter and now my second, I’d get the ham all day for a $1 more, biscuits (I would ask them not to toast em), and oddly enough the hash browns (also ask to not overcook) even though I am usually a home fry kinda lady, they just didn’t have any flavor and kinda hard. The eggs is your call. Scrambled may be less of an expectation. The chicken gnocchi soup was lacking gnocchi that we could find and tasted of canned chicken (even if it wasn’t) and had a gravy like consistency. Might be a good alternative for the biscuits or toast if you like to dip. Now the Cor-talian grilled sandwich was really sad for the $13 honestly. This was the smallest, crunchiest and minimally filled sandwich I have had yet in town. There was about three little pepperonis & salamis, and two slices of rolled ham (one looked like turkey?), thin layer of cheese, grilled and flattened to a nice, hard deck of cards. I ate one half but the other I just ate the inside as the bread was too hard. For the price, it wasn’t holding up. This was about a $6 meal, $7 if you want the bagged chips poured on the plate. Lastly the French toast. Anyone ever grow up with “cinnamon toast” as my folks would call it? It was bread, lightly toasted and smothered with butter, cinnamon and sugar and microwaved (I know!). This was NOT microwaved French toast by any means but it had the same flavors that brought back the memories of my childhood cinnamon toast. That being said, it did not taste like any French toast I have ever had, I felt it was lacking something and wasn’t what we were expecting when you think of French toast. Believe me, after growing up on microwaved breads you really look forward and know some good French toast! But for $3 a piece it wasn’t worth the let down and mind you I have come a long way from microwaved bread so it was still edible. So all this to say, I wouldn’t really recommend the breakfast platter, the French toast or the Italian sandwich and soup (if it’s the chicken gnocchi)…. and for the price, quantity and quality, I’d personally just check...

I rarely write bad reviews, but we really did not have a good experience. When we were parking, there was a white SUV that came flying through and we had to stomp the brakes to not get hit. Turns out she carried eggs into the restaurant and works there. Interesting start but still hungry so we decided to stay. The service was okay, and the pastries in the cabinet looked delicious, but the breakfast we got was one of the worst anywhere. When we walked in, lots of workers walked by but no one greeted us. We finally asked if we can sit and they said to just sit wherever. We were excited about the homemade biscuits and gravy, but the biscuits had a sweet flavor to them that my husband didn’t like and were very small and dry. He said the gravy was good. The hash browns tasted like frozen ones that weren’t quite cooked enough…they had a weird crunch and no flavor. I got the quiche and salad. The strawberry salad was good but small for the price, and the piece of quiche I got was the tiniest I’ve ever seen and so dry that I couldn’t eat it. My husband took a bite and agreed. The bread on my plate was a brick and inedible as well. I could have cracked the plate with it. I will say they took the quiche off of our tab and apologized, saying their quiche is usually a customer favorite. I was afraid to try the pastries after all that, so we paid and left. Hopefully others have a...

Love love love this shop. We didn't have the best experience, but I still love the food. We got there all the tables were taken , there was no sign that said please wait to be seated or anything so we walked up to the counter and ordered our food. I ordered a spinach quiche with a strawberry spinach and poppy seed dressing salad. My husband ordered a sausage croissant. When one of the tables cleared we went to go sit down and somebody came up and said you ordered your food to go so now you're going to have to wait because now we have a wait list. well we hadn't ordered our food to go it wasn't even asked or even discussed We just thought we ordered at the counter and then went and sat down as soon as the table became ready. I was hungry and didn't want to argue so we just went ahead and took our food to go. There was only like seven tables in the little cafe and there was quite a few people already in line waiting for a table. I wasn't going to cause a scene even though I did want to eat there, I just let it go. We got our food and ate in the car but it was delicious. The quiche was absolutely yummy and the strawberries finished salad was on par with the best I've had. I will definitely go back there and now that I know how this is supposed to work, we will do it right next time. Maybe at that point I will up my review...