Tarantula Tiki Lounge — Restaurant in Fort Worth

BEWARE!! They will charge you whatever they want to if you’re using a card to pay. Went here for the first time with my bf after dinner the other night. We tried to sit at the empty bar when we walked in, but was told by one of the bartenders that we needed to wait to be seated by him, only for him to sit us at the bar in the exact place we tried to sit at when we walked in. My bf had a beer and I ordered one of their drinks, which was so strong that it tasted like I was drinking isopropyl alcohol. I didn’t ask for them to take it back, but instead asked for a different drink. I never received the second drink but was certainly charged for it when the bill came. My bf had already paid the tab when he noticed the extra charge. He asked the other bartender if she could refund him the amount for the second drink we never received, and she made a snarky comment about asking us if our tab was correct before she handed us the receipt. They told us they refunded the original amount and gave us a secondary receipt with the last drink taken off, in which my bf paid. Today, he noticed on his bank statement that the original charge had posted through, not the one with the corrected amount. My bf gave them a $2 tip, which was more than they deserved, but since they charge what they want, they now got a $10 tip. I’m not even going to try to reach out to management or the owner, as I’ve seen how unprofessional he’s been in his responses to previous 1 star reviews. I will say that we will NEVER go back, and will make sure people know what a shady place this is. And a word of advise, unless you want to be in the same position we are, PAY IN CASH.

Addendum: To the “owner” of the bar- I can handle strong drinks and have done so for the last 10 years. I’ll wait a few days to see if the adjusted charge goes through, but if not, I’ll make sure to make a trip back over to your “establishment” and hopefully I can meet...

Excellent Cocktails and Good Atmosphere!

Having experienced numerous tiki bars around the country, I can confidently say that DFW has a winner here! The drinks were well made, balanced, and strong. The quality of the cocktails was on par with the best I’ve had from the likes of Smugglers Cove, Three Dots, and Inside Passage. Tarantula doesn’t have their own tiki mugs yet (please, make some eventually!), so don’t expect custom made glassware or fun ceramic mugs. However, they do garnish their cocktails pretty well and have their own swizzle sticks. Also, no food or small bites served here.

The atmosphere is pretty good! You can tell time and effort was put into making the decorations and vibe of the bar transport you to a tropical seaside getaway. There is no fancy lighting effects which go off for special drinks or fire coming out of the cocktails, or that level of fanfare, but the vibes are good. I can see them adding bit more decor in the future to maybe cover the ceiling more, but minor things.

Now to nitpick, but this doesn’t reflect the 5 star review:

I think the menus should be inclusive of all drink offerings and not have a QR code to scan in order to find the shared drinks and rum, beer offerings. I also think the menu should also be made of higher quality than a laminated piece of paper. Feels off.

I understand not having custom mugs, but some classic tiki cocktail glasses can be found online for cheap, such as pearl diver glasses. This would be nice to add. Even adding a single ceramic tiki mug which can be found online (not custom) could be a nice addition.

Please make a visit here! We visited on a Thursday night at 8:30 PM...

The female bartender appears to be under the influence…motor-skills and spatial awareness appears off while the male bartender is acting as if he’s auditioning or competing with our Secret_Service completely disregarding service to customers. Negative stars if possible. I’ve been visiting here for years- gladly paying the premium for the quality drinks, atmosphere, & customer service to hangout or take to go. I don’t know what happened recently but the service has been at an all time low during my last 2 visits. Highly doubt I will ever return. I witnessed both male & female bartenders be rude to my friend. In about 30minutes, I witnessed both of them be excessive in their reaction to other patrons who were not doing anything out of the ordinary. As a result of that incident, my friend tried to courteously defend the other patrons only to then be yelled at by the female bartender. I politely told both bartenders their customer service was trash and that I found it unfortunate. I hope these two bartenders are fired.

Editing to add my reply to owner below: I was on foot (not on a bike). As I stated above, I witnessed and left immediately along with another nice female customer who was sitting at the end of the bar. As I also stated, this was my 2nd time experiencing an unpleasant visit. I can't remember the name of the Tarantulas owner who typically gets coffee @Roots but he is always great & he's offered me a job on more than one occasion (whether serious or not, I've always considered it a kind compliment). I've worked in customer-facing retail since 2002 and can certainly recognize bad clients but this was not the case. Best...