Southern Barrel Brewing Co.

"My wife and I were in Port Royal visiting Shellring Ale Works (excellent!) and we decided to detour over to Bluffton and visit Southern Barrel because my wife is a big fan of their Wild Bramble sour. I’m trying to be a little sympathetic in my review because clearly something was amiss with the staff. My wife is allergic to strawberries and when she asked our waiter if two of the fruited beers had strawberry he responded, “I don’t know, and I doubt anyone else here knows either.” Then we overheard the bartender tell another patron in response to their question, “I don’t know. I don’t really drink beer.” Both of these responses fail for a response when you are a local brewery. Also we were sitting close enough to the kitchen to see that they were on the verge of a mutiny. Two kitchen staff walked out while we were there. I get that restaurants have bad days. I just couldn’t tell if our waiter was moving around with frantic understaffed energy, if scattered energy is just his vibe, or if he was disinterested. At one point I needed more napkins and when he brought them over he never even broke stride as he dropped them on our table. My biggest hurdle with this visit is that the location lacked any of the atmosphere you would expect from a local brewery. It felt like an Applebee’s or TGIFridays or BJs or any other generic chain restaurant that happens to have their own beer on tap. My fried chicken sandwich lacked flavor and had so much sodium that it could have eradicated all the slugs in a 10 mile radius. My wife’s sandwich was missing ingredients, but with everything we could see going on in the kitchen and our waiter fluctuating between rushing around the restaurant and checking his phone, there was no way we were going to risk sending it back to get it fixed. At the end of the day, I’m just disappointed that I spent $60 on such a lackluster lunch. We were trying to show some love to a local brewery that makes a beer we like, but it just felt very corporate. We’ll still enjoy Wild Bramble when we see it out but there’s no draw for us to return here."

"pictured: jerk clucker (blackened) with fries i’m seeing a lot of reviews about how bad the service is but we didn’t have an issue at all. she checked on us several times. anyways, now for the food part. i got a southern helles lager and it was pretty good. my chicken sandwich was decent but i think i’d try something else next time (it had a lot of sauce for my taste). my husband said his burger was delicious. if i’m close by again in the future i’ll definitely come back!"

"The Classic Burger is the best in town - likely the best I've ever had! My husband and I asked for our fries well done and they delivered. Service from Carissa G. was exceptional! Our new favorite place to grab a Classic American Burger Plate. Thank you for renewing my outlook on exceptional service and an outstanding burger & fries!"

"Great place to eat. We split a huge pretzel appetizer with beer cheese. Then had a classic burger cooked medium to perfection. The only complaint I would have, one of the waitresses was wearing spandex shorts and it was not fun watching her pull the legs of shorts down to get rid of wedgies on the front and back. Very unprofessional and slightly disgusting."

"Loved this stop on our trip home! Firstly, top marks for location/ambiance. Lots of parking and a great size to accommodate patrons. Service was fantastic, very friendly with recommendations and thoughtful of tastebuds when it came to the honey with ghost pepper dust. We tried 5 beers and they were all tasty- absolutely no funky ones in the bunch. You should definitely give them a go!"