The Pufferbelly Ltd.
 Kent, Ohio        Date of Visit  06/26/15        http://www.pufferbellyltd.com

All these years in Kent, and while The Pufferbelly has been on the list, we have never quite made it. Mother-dear met some long time friends to split dessert, enjoyed it, we are in town for a long awaited step in dissertating, went well, let’s eat. I do really like the weathered and worn charm of the old railroad depot. The floor sags beneath your feet and decades gone by cling to the walls and ceilings.
 

Piles of rustic charm.

The service was attentive if a little odd. It’s an interesting collection of folks from the moment you hit the door til the moment the manager is talking about photobombing the wedding party using the building for pictures. We almost went through with it.
 

We ordered a pretzel appetizer, salad and Sammy, and the special came with a little salad. The Bavarian pretzels were actually nearing awesome. Thick warm sticks, split down the length and stuffed with swiss cheese and caraway seeds. A good start. Add a cup of Bavarian beer mustard sauce studded with onions and it gets really good. Neither the onion nor seeds would be high on Steph’s lists of tastiness but everything worked so well together, she didn’t mind either.

She ordered the cashew chicken salad croissant, a Caesar salad and a side of fries. The salad was precisely average with a very tame Caesar dressing, but the fries were lacquer brown, crispy and above the middle of the road. The buttery croissant had a light toast and was piled with chunks of chicken and nut all swathed in mayo with a fair bite of tang, some earthy sharp from celery seeds and sweetness from added honey. Not bad at all…with I had stuck to the menu.
 

Pretty Standard Caesar
 

The special on the sign outside the door was hog skins. Hmm? I asked. Tater skins filled with pulled pork, bacon and cheese. Sprinkle a little scallion on top and you have yourself a hog skin, or in this case three. It was served with a functional little salad, which improved markedly with their house dressing, cheese. A thick house-made ranch is studded with the teeniest little nuggets of cheese (something akin to the salt and texture of Parm). It was tasty and I was soon dipping everything on the table, save one. The hog skins.
 

A nice idea had sat entirely too long or been composed of ingredients which had sat entirely too long but there just wasn’t a way to get through them. The taters had completely leathered up and the first piece of bacon had petrified and was more difficult to chew than the so named forest would be. Salad good. Special bad. Very bad. We didn’t order dessert since we were headed elsewhere, probably should have, remembered later that’s what Mom enjoyed. Overall, not a bad outing if you could ignore the hog skin special.