TIFFIN, Ohio — It took more than a decade, but a once-popular bar in Tiffin rebranded and is once again a community favorite.
Chris Chase worked at the Madison Street Tavern while attending Tiffin University. After graduating, he bought the bar and since 2009 he has slowly transformed the bar into a proper restaurant, MST Pub & Grub.
"Get it from a college bar to more of a restaurant. I mean, that took seven or eight years just to get everything acclimated to the way we wanted to," Chase said.
While the burgers are great, the signature item on the menu is hand-cut and tossed chicken chunks.
And you won't find an over-the-counter bottle of sauce for those chunks anywhere in MST, as each sauce flavor is created and continuously tweaked in the kitchen as well.
Along with serving their signature sauces in-house, they've also been bottling the sauces for years and selling them throughout the region. And they just launched a new label celebrating the upcoming solar eclipse.
"We wanted to create a signature bottle just for the event itself," Chase said. "Something that people can take home with them, grab it, keep it on the shelf just as a remembrance of what's happening."
Their sauce game is so strong, Chase launched a spin-off business, MST Sauce Company.
He's been taking the sauces to competitions around the country and coming home with a lot of impressive finishes.
"Our honey barbecue sauce did really well. We finished third in a big competition," Chase said. "There's over 600 entrants down there so it's kind of our first taste of big competition and we did really well. So, it's exciting."
MST Pub & Grub is open six days a week at varying hours.