Sunday, June 29, 2014

Cigar City Brewpub – Tampa, FL



We’ve wanted to check out Cigar City Brewpub for a while now, so we were excited when our friends Katie & Tony invited us to join them for dinner. 


The Brewpub opened last year and I’ve only heard good things about it.  Cigar City Brewery is based here in Tampa and according to Ratebeer.com, it’s the 4th best brewery in the world and BeerAdvocate.com gives it a 100/100, calling it a “world-class” brewery.  When they opened, the owner of the Brewpub said "a lot of our beer is very culinary inspired. We're big believers in food and beer pairings." 

It is a bit of a drive if you live in South Tampa like we do.  It’s actually on Tasting Tampa’s Top Ten List for the Carrollwood area. 

 

There were a lot of cool beer-inspired design elements to the restaurant – chandeliers and light fixtures made of cans and barrels, barley in the shape of glasses of beer, and a window where you can view the vats of beer being brewed.  
 

Since they have so many beers to pick from, we started off with sample flights.  Katie and I both like less hoppy beers so our beers were a lot lighter than the boys’ beers.  We also had an appetizer of yuca fries with mojo aioli which were great.  
 

For dinner I had shrimp & grits – which were the best ones I’ve ever had.  The shrimp were huge and it had the perfect amount of spices.  Lance got the BBQ  Burger with caramelized onions, bacon, swiss cheese, and a sunny side up egg.  Katie had stuffed piquillo peppers filled with chorizo, manchego cheese & rice and a side of mac & cheese.  And Tony had the Ropa Vieja slow cooked flank steak.  
 

Everyone loved their food and there were tons of other things on the menu I’d like to try.  They also let you take growlers of beer to go so we filled up a few and brought them back to Tony & Katie’s place (they just moved into a new house.) It was the perfect way to spend a Saturday night!  

Cigar City Brewpub is located at 15491 N Dale Mabry Hwy, Tampa, FL 33624.  They are open Sunday through Thursday 11am – 10pm and Friday & Saturday 11am – 11pm.

No comments:

Post a Comment