St. Nicholas Brewing Company — Local services in Du Quoin

St. Nicholas Brewing Company; a locally owned brewpub located in Du Quoin, IL. This brewery is located inside a historic hotel built in the early 1800s. After many years of neglect and abandonment, the owners of St. Nicholas began the process to restore this historic Du Quoin landmark. In August 2014, they opened their doors to the public. They feature in-house brewed beer, to be paired with a creative selection of burgers, sandwiches and pizzas.

We tried a few recommendations from our waiter and they did not disappoint! We ordered the St. Nick fries: a perfectly crisp plate of fries, smothered in beer cheese, and topped with green onions and salty bacon. The fries were seasoned well, and cooked to just the right doneness to hold up to the heavy cheese sauce. This gave each bite the crunch that many smothered fry dishes lack.

We chose another recommended dish, the fish tacos. These tacos came in your choice of corn or flour tortillas that were slathered in queso, with a generous piece of flaky beer battered cod. They were loaded with red cabbage, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, southwest ranch, and lime; however, the lime was very light, and a little more would have really amped up the flavor. Overall, the tacos were great, and we were definitely impressed with the topping to fish ratio. For her side, she chose the bacon roasted brussel sprouts. The sprouts had a good balance of toastiness with the bitterness that you expect from brussel sprouts, and paired really well with the salty bacon.

I tried the buffalo chicken pizza, what has seemingly become a brewpub classic. The buttery golden crust was topped with buffalo sauce, cheddar and mozzarella cheeses, chicken, jalapenos, and finished with a drizzle of ranch. The result was a deliciously cheesy, tangy, and spicy slice of pizza. The crust held up well to the toppings, was not overly doughy, and provided the satisfying crunch that this pizza deserves.

We meant to try the heavily recommended cupcakes, but alas, there was no more room for dessert. We'll try them next time and report back. If you like the brewpub atmosphere, this is...

I have visited both the airport location in Carbondale and this original location in DuQuoin. I find the meals at the airport location in Carbondale to be quite good. So I was honestly shocked that their original location had such an absolute meltdown. We waited approximately 15 minutes for a table, despite their being lots of empty tables. OK. No problem. Some places are having staffing issues. I get it. But what happened next was absolutely unacceptable in a place serving food. Two people in our party ordered the fried cod with fries meal ($21/per plate). First, instead of fillets (as the menu indicated), we were served fish sticks. Second, it was supposed to be beer battered, and it was quite obviously a dry breading that I think was meant to taste like cajun seasoning. It tasted horrendous. Both plates came out over cooked (fish was hard on the inside). When we called this to the server's attention, she said, "I'll have the kitchen drop you a new order right away," and she ran away so fast neither of us had time to tell her we didn't want a second chance at this meal. But out came our second orders, only slightly less over-done. Served fish sticks again. Still with the inedible over-seasoned breading. When the server came back, I asked why we received fish sticks when the menu said "fillets". She said, "I don't know. I don't talk to the kitchen." Da heck? We peeled the breading off of the fish, and it only amounted to a few mouthfuls of fish....for $21 a plate. My brother said, if this is the best they can do with two tries at it, they need to take the fish off the menu. If we had bought frozen Gorton's fish sticks, it would have tasted better than this. I literally left feeling sick and had to go home and lay down. Our final bill was in the neighborhood of $80. I take my online reviews very seriously. I try to give businesses the benefit of the doubt, especially small, local business owners, but this was so beyond the pale, that I will never step foot in this location again. They do not deserve another chance. The...

I won't leave a poor star review because this place is usually outstanding. We stop in multiple times a year.. we even make sure to stop at the landmark location on the way to our southern Missouri float trip every July but tonight was just terrible. It was my boyfriends birthday and this was our last stop before we headed home. We arrived at 7:40.. we were sat in a timely manor.. 10 mins passed and nobody had greeted us so I ran to the bathroom. As I passed by I experienced our server Kiaja arguing with another employee about how she was planning to leave at 8 and she wasn't taking that table (us) I came back to to my table that at this point it at been 20 mins and nobody had gotten drink orders.. mind you we were just there for drinks. Finally after 25 mins she came to get our drink order and another almost 15 mins passed before she went looking our drinks. After we got our 3 beers, she never came back to our table. We had to ask another server to cash us out. As somebody that has been in the restaurant industry for 25 years, I'm usually understanding.. I'll take into consideration the situation and how busy it is. This was blatant situation of being made feel unwelcome because the employee did not want to wait on us because she was ready to go home and while I sympathize with that if the place was closing but it was an hour before. We had a friend with that had never been to St.Nicks and I asked her to not judge the place on this experience because we truly love this place and plan to come back. I hope this sincerely was just case of a...