Mr. Jim’s Cannon Brewpub

No Longer In Business

The downtown Mobile, Alabama brewpub has been sold and will open December 2006 as Hurricane Brewing Company. The new local owner/managers have renovated the hurricane damaged building and remodeled the interior to a more open space pub atmosphere. Please search this site for Hurricane Brewing for more information and reviews.

(This place is now: Hurricane Brewing.) This is a really good place for Alabama. I grew up in Mobile and there are just very few unique restaurants in downtown Mobile, and fewer that have good beer. This place is charting a unique course, and although their beer is nothing special, I salute them. Their beer is well-balanced and well-conceived but rather average for a micro brewery. The food is good and the service was actually excellent.

The building is in a decent location in an area of Downtown Mobile that the city has been trying to revitalize for many years, and have done so with limited success. The seating is somewhat cramped inside and we watched two separate servers drop the same table’s food twice, mainly due to tight corners and for some reason not using the dumb waiter to get the food down from the upstairs kitchen. I did not eat much of my dish, very bland (Blackened Grouper Sandwich) but they did comp me my portion since I did not eat it. The beer selection was interesting, for it included a Berliner Weisse. I was pleasantly surprised to see it as one of the two seasonal offerings and after some bickering with my waitress I convinced her to let me have it straight. They were adding raspberry syrup to knock down the tartness. They were out of one of their "year round" brews which was also dissapointing. Overall, not very impressed with the quality (beer, food, and service).

Have to say for Alabama this was top notch. The beer wasn’t exactly amazing, but there was an Irish Ale that was utterly unique. The staff were all beer geeks. I even met the brewer, who’s name I promptly forgot, who had a few choice words to say about the fairness of GABF run beer contests. The pub itself was located in what looked to be Mobile’s party district and while it wasn’t jam packed the crowd was lively and seemed to mostly be there for the beer.

I have mixed feelings about this place. The beer was average at best, but we are in Alabama and alcohol laws really limit what brewers can do. They did have 5 varieties to pick from and they had both ales and lagers. Our server was not the best (slow service even on a slow night), but he was friendly. The place was relatively comfortable and my steak was great (though some of my friends did not enjoy their meals as much as me). There is definitely room for improvement.