Waimea Brewing Co. / The Grove Cafe

No Longer In Business

Possibly the WORST service I’ve ever had ... if you can call *getting seated and waiting for nearly 20 minutes before NOT being waited on OR even having the server make eye contact with us* service! I hope your beers are good, because that would be the only thing that should bring people back. Maybe their introductory sentence should change to the worstern most brewery on the west coast.

Recently renovated and rejiggered and now called The Grove Cafe, Waimea brewing offers a decent destination for the beer nerd on the strength of their IPA alone. The first thing you’ll notice when you step in here is that they prominently feature taps of Bud and Coors, which IMO is an insult to not only craft but their establishment itself. If your function is as a brewpub, why not offer your light lager to customers instead of Bud? Isn’t that the whole point?

The beers range from undrinkably horrible to absolutely excellent. The APA, IPA, and Mild were the latter, and the standard lager/fruit beer/wheat beer/red were so bad I could hardly put them down. Everything uses the same yeast and everything is filtered to death but still hazy due to a crappy brewing process.

The food is quite good, however, and the location very nice (what in Hawaii isn’t?); plus the food all over the island pretty much sucks so you aren’t really missing anything by coming here. Recommended.

The location is spectacular. Be sure to wander around the cottage property. Beautiful and picturesque. Unfortunately, the brewery is run down and dirty. The service is not very good. The beer is not to style, e.g. the wheat/hefe is more like a golden ale, and was not very palatable at that. I hope they turn things around soon.

The worst brew pub I have ever been to. The beer was mediocre, but passable if they had some good food to back it up, but the food was atrocious. The chicken tenders are anything but tender. It was like chicken jerky, and the wait staff was too bust flirting with one another to care. Just horrible. On the bright side the building and the surrounding area is beautiful. Nice old Hawaiian plantation with swaying palms. The perfect backdrop if they could get their act together.

I will pretty much second everything Davecooks said. This place is pretty lame. For one, the place is dirty, and really run down. I was afraid to put my daughter in the high chair for fear that it would fall apart. The patio is about to fall down. Seriously. The food is uninspired and poor. The beer is barely acceptable. I had the Na Pali Pale ale, which was just below average. The porter I had wasn’t even really worth my effort to drink it so I left it there. This is the worlds most westernmost brewery. That is its’ only claim to fame. There ain’t much beer-wise on Kauai, but still, skip this place and go get a Pina Colada somewhere.

I had heard so many good things about this place. It is beautiful but it all falls apart after that. The place was dirty. They didn’t have many beers to choose from. What they had tasted as if it was brewed only with specialty malts, no base malts. The food was just OK. My wife had a question about something on the menu and was informed by the waitress that she didn’t know what it was and then made it obvious she wasn’t going to go ask anyone either. Being cat people we didn’t much mind the feral kitties that were lounging on the deck until we were joined by one that had only recently lost it’s tail and it had infected, rotten looking vertebra coming up out of it’s rump (made the pork sandwich a little hard to stomach).

This brew pub is very well located in a beautiful spot below the south end of the Waimea canyon. In regard to beer, they were out of my first two choices, and the one I ordered was quite mediocre. There is a fairly good range of food on the menu, however, they were out of the onion rings I wanted. The pork sandwich I ordered was ok, but not great - my wife didn’t much like her meal (I forgot what she ordered). The only reason to stop at this place is to enjoy the scenery and to realize that you are drinking beer at the western-most brewery in the U.S. (and the only one open to the public on Kaua’i).

A great place to stop after a visit to Waimea Canyon. Very laid back, with lots of outdoor seating and cats and chickens running around. the brews tend towards the light end and are brewpub average. The food is a very pleasant surprise especially the fish, and is reasonably priced for Hawaii. Be sure to explore the grounds, which offer a step back in time with all the plantation corttages. Spectacular Banyan treees and coastline. I wanna go back!

Located in the middle of a coconut grove on the outskirts of Waimea on the site of an old plantation. The outdoor seating area is a bit bigger than the inside of the restaurant. No view of the ocean, but you can see the mountains off in the distance. 7 house beers the day day I visited. I particularly liked the Na Pali Coast Pale Ale. Foodwise I had the ahi poke and it was very tasty. My girlfriend had the nachos and they were pretty bush league. Stick with the fish on Kaua’i, I guess. Loved being outside in the coconut grove in the nice weather. Chickens and roosters had the run of the patio (as they do on the rest of the island) and were cheap entertainment while waiting for the beer.

Found this place by accident on our way back from the canyon, I think they have moved as the picture here is not what I experienced. It is located in a coconut palm grove with towering, beautiful trees. The bar area is very open to the outside, with large french doors and huge windows open to let a nice breeze through. Atmosphere was laid back, brewpub meets beach shack. They were out of many of their regular offerings and the brewer’s special, which the bartender told me was a really strong IPA, which I assumed would have been a double...wish I didn’t miss that one. I really liked the Cane Fire Red. Only had an order of onion rings, the guava-chile sauce was really good. This is what vacation is all about...