Cigar City Brewing Spruce Street Brewery & Taproom — Restaurant in Tampa

Wow, worst experience ever. So bad, I was embarrassed for the staff. Had friends come into town from Gainesville to attend the Bucs/Bears game. My friend and his wife hadn't been to CCB in nearly 3 years, first time for me. When we arrived at CCB, they had just opened. Nearly half the menu was unavailable or had to be served alacarte. No rice, bread and many other things including hamburger buns(?) People sitting next to us said "good luck, we've been waiting 7 minutes for ranch and blue cheese for our wings and they're out of everything".. Hmmm OK. My friend ordered blackened grouper but received fried and had to send back the grouper and his ice cold fries and waited 10 minutes for another smaller portion of the fries. (at least they were hot this time) Even though I had ordered but had to cancel my original rice bowl order, the staff placed a huge bowl of ingredients from the rice bowl on our table, even though I had to cancel it due to them being completely out of rice. Made them remove it from our bill. The first two beers I ordered were flat and finally received decent enough beer on the third choice. While we were sitting and waiting for our food, one of the staff walked by with a tray that had so many beers on top, it was nearly impossible for her to carry it and of course 3 of the beers went sailing off smashing to the floor sending glass and beer all over the patrons. When we were finally done it took the wait staff and a manager nearly two to three times to get our final bill correct. Talk about chaos. The service was so bad I'm embarrassed and although the staff was nice I don't see how this place can continue to stay in business in fact they should have just closed the kitchen down for the day and served beer only. After we LEFT CCB, we went across the street to Walmart to pick up supplies for their trip to the beach and there were about a hundred bags of rice and another 50 bags of yellow rice on the Shelf at Walmart so I don't know why the management wouldn't send an employee across the street with a corporate credit card to pick up supplies because oh yeah they had plenty of hamburger buns too. Even though I grew up in Tampa this is my first time at CCB and it will also be my last and I can't in good faith recommend CCB to friends and clients. I have purchased CCB beers and other items from third-party vendors and have been satisfied with their Brewery Products but the restaurant and this public Brewery location is a complete failure. If you're in Tampa visiting I recommend Tampa Bay Brewing Company or Coppertail and if you're over by st. Pete or Treasure Island go to Mastry's Brewing. CCB is bad on all levels, save your money and go someplace else. Oh, and on the supply side issues none of the other restaurants I've been to this week had a problem with fulfilling their menu items so this seems to be a problem with CCB management. Very...

Update: After Cigar City was acquired by Monster, El Catador Club was ended and I did not see any serious attempts at high-end big dark barrel-aged brews being put out until just recently. So very sad to see this great brewery fall so far so fast. I used to be a regular here. This is the first time I've visited in over a year. There was no reason to come here. Tavour has filled the gap left by the absence of great brews coming out of Cigar City, thank goodness for Tavour. But just not the same as the brewery taproom experience. In this visit, I tried two adjunct-free barrel-aged imperial porters that were excellent. First time I've seen CCB put anything like this out in a long, long time. They still have the exact same menu. In fact, it still says there's a El Catador Club member discount on the menu. There isn't. We asked. Food was good. My meal was very good. My wife was disappointed in her burger. Overcooked. Different and inferior bun.

Cigar City is no longer my go-to brewery - for beer or dining. But I will be back if they offer more like the brews I had tonight. Hope it takes less time than it for this visit to happen. It would be awesome if CCB started the El Catador Club again. But the new owner does NOT seem committed at all to the craft beer crowd. This seems strange to say about a company that purchased a once top craft brewery. Crossing my fingers that things change in the future.

Update: Over a thousand beers and several hundred breweries later... Tampa Bay residents are blessed to have one of the country's best breweries right here. CCB consistently cranks out outstanding wood-aged imperials. It is one of the best breweries in the country for offering top tier imperial stouts, porters, barleywines, and browns. And it always offers at least one barrel-aged imperial on tap and very often will have several on tap at once.

Original: Great selection and many great beers and many that you will only find at the tap room. However, it lacks the warmth of your neighborhood place where they...

Jai Alai has been my favorite beer for quite some time now so naturally, when I found myself in Tampa on a quick family getaway, I HAD to visit Cigar City Brewery on Spruce Street! We went there for lunch but it was really an excuse for me to visit the place that makes the beer I drink everyday. To start off with, the place is just super cool to walk into. As soon as we were seated, we were instantly greeted by a nice girl with a big smile and awesome energy. After an early and long morning/afternoon with the fam, everyone was fairly dejected walking in (everyone other than me of course) so our server could have easily fed off our negative energy. Instead, she projected her personality onto us, was fun and upbeat and just the right amount of goofy! She was patient as we asked 147 questions about the menu and the beers and made the entire experience so much fun that EVERYONE was talking about it (and her) for the rest of our trip. Since I was at Cigar City, I HAD to have a shirt, right? Well while they sell shirts there, I wanted the one that the servers were wearing and they didn't have any out on display. I asked our server if she would check for me and when she came out from the back, she explained that they did not have anymore... however, she DID come out with a shirt for me in my size that wasn't out anywhere else and then told me that it was a gift from her! To many people this may just seem like a silly shirt but with the scenario that I've described above, it made my entire experience. I'm not more special than anyone else but on that day, in that moment, she sure made me FEEL like I was! I wish I could remember her name but I did get the name of the manager so Randy - if you read this, please let her know how much everything she did meant to me and my family (but mostly me lol). I cannot wait until the next time I'm in Tampa so I can pop in for a bite and a beer and visit my friend!

P.S. The food was...