The Mud House — Restaurant in St. Louis

Years ago it was a nice establishment. I lived 2 blocks away and it was my go-to cafe. Before pandemic hit it started going downhill in quality, consistency, and service, so I found other cafes and mostly stopped going here. When I did go there the few years before pandemic started, it was often a chaotic affair where the staffers and size of the establishment could not handle the volume of guests, many of them who had moved into the Benton Park neighborhood over preceding few years, injecting their cafe with hipster appeal, where solo guests would take up 4-seat tables for 3-4+ hours on their laptops. Now that the world is less crazy we decided to get coffee there recently and heard there were new owners, so figured maybe that meant new experiences. It was much worse. The staff was rude, acted like us wearing masks 😷 was a HUGE inconvenience to hear us, after finally speaking loud enough for the young inattentive barrista to take the order they rang us up wrong and got upset when we politely corrected them. They walked away and huffily mumbled something. We went to the end of the counter where the coffee is served and the other two staff made a pointed effort not to make eye contact with or engage with any customers. It was surreal. The coffee pourer staffer brought one coffee and walked away immediately without letting us speak to them to inform them there were two. It was very difficult to get them to acknowledge our attempts to talk to them, and once we got their attention, they too were rude to us and acted as if it was a huge inconvenience and the like. This place has become a parody of how cafes are parodied in 90s sitcoms. The food is inconsistent, service rude and inattentive, and their one-size small coffee is still not as good as it should be for the price. Save your time, money, and stress levels and go somewhere else. In STL we have no shortage of great and friendly cafes to patronize. Maybe we'll try this one again in a few years and see if anything...

I had a terrible experience here today. Not only did I encounter one of the rudest people I’ve ever met (not the Mud Rooms fault) but we were asked to leave. Me and my 2 friends came here for breakfast. I had my cousin’s 11 month old with me. My 2 friends were able to sit but I did not have a chair. I was standing holding a baby in the middle of the restaurant and asked a customer if I could use her extra chair. We asked 4 times. We assumed she was deaf- gave her to the benefit of the doubt. Another person came up and asked her, she was happy to give them her seat. Nice. How kind. Completely ignored all of us. So my friends ate and I waited to order until I was able to get a chair. 10 minutes later, I was able to get a chair from another table so I was able to sit and order food. I get my food, eat really quick and then feed the baby. I was feeding him blueberries and enjoying just being able to sit down. As I was feeding the baby and catching up with my friends, we were asked to leave by one of the workers. We were asked to leave because “there are people standing waiting for tables”. I was just standing with a child in my hands and not able to even get food. I was barely done and asked to leave. We were so uncomfortable that we threw our stuff away and didn’t get to even finish our drinks. I will never come here again. I thought coffee shops were meant to relax and catch up, but not here. Get more seats if you need to ask people to leave mid-meal. I’m appalled and honestly felt so disrespected. My poor baby didn’t get to finish his food and I was just in shock that this happened. It’s awful. I’m never like this. I’m hate leaving bad reviews, but I just can’t...

I came here for coffee after my machine broke a few months ago, and long story short, I come here almost every day for an vainilla oat milk latte, and I still haven’t bought a new coffee machine lol. Clearly, I love their lattes, and every time I order food from here I’m happy with my decision. Usually the service is really great, but today I had the worst experience with one of the barista‘s.

She helped me last week, and the price of my coffee was a few cents more than it usually is. When I inquired about it, she told me it was a credit card processing fee. Understandable, no problem. Although, I came in a few times between last week and today, and my coffee was the same price it usually is (no price increase). As fate would have it, she helped me again today, and the same coffee was even more than it was the last time she helped me. When I inquired about the price going up even more, she was very condescending, rude, and could not explain why the price change hasn’t been consistent. As previously stated, I’ve come in almost every day for the past five or six months, and everyone is usually so warm and welcoming, so I was very taken aback by this experience, and by how rude and condescending she was towards me for simply inquiring about these random prices - only she has been charging me.

I feel unwanted and unsafe knowing that someone can charge me whatever they want to charge me for a latte - and for whatever reason they want to do it. Unless I have exactly $6.95 in cash I will not be back. It’s a shame how one bad experience can...