Cisco Kitchen + Bar
Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Well, this is a one of a kind, beer garden restaurant experience. Welcome to Cisco Brewers Kitchen + Bar. We are in New Bedford, Massachusetts, right on the water, overlooking New Bedford harbor and Buzzards Bay, and this is a sprawling dining, drinking and entertainment complex. And if you consider yourself a food lover and a beer aficionado, this place should be right at the top of your must visit list.
Cisco started out brewing beer in Nantucket. They've added some beer gardens in Boston, but this is definitely the crown jewel of the Cisco Brewers Empire. The first thing that hits you is just the size and scope of this place. There's so much going on, it's almost hard to even describe it. You have a full service restaurant and bar that's open year round. You have indoor dining, outdoor dining. There's a roof deck bar, and the centerpiece is this truly massive beer garden. It takes up over three and a half acres of space. There are outdoor bars, food trucks, games, fire pits, picnic tables and killer water views.
At a lot of beer gardens, you might have a couple choices for stuff to eat, but here, the menu is extensive, fresh and the food is fantastic. Usually, the first thing I order when I'm drinking beer is a pretzel. This is a big, fluffy, fresh baked pretzel, nice and crispy on the outside, super fluffy on the inside, and it's all about the dips on the side. You have whole grain mustard, and of course, you have that melted beer cheese. I just like to take that pretzel, grip it, rip it, and dip it into the beer cheese, and you really get the flavor of the Cisco beer right into that cheese sauce. Beer and pretzels. Ain't nothing better.
Aside from the pretzels, the rest of the menu is a lot more interesting and creative, and there's a lot of Asian influence. I mean, check this out. When was the last time you went to a beer garden that had a full service sushi bar? One of the signature dishes is a sushi burrito. It's stuffed with spicy tuna, shrimp, tempura, avocado and rice drizzled with a mango habanero sauce.
If you want to dig into something more substantial, get the sesame ginger noodle bowl. You’ve got perfectly grilled marinated steak, a whole pile of rice noodles. That is one heck of a bowl. Here's a Chinese dish with some serious New England influence: the lobster fried rice. So you have a mix of fresh lobster meat, sweet soy sauce, togarashi spice, a little mango, veggies, and some Korean kimchi. So you got a little bit of the funkiness and the sourness from the kimchi, little bit of sweetness from the mango, saltiness from the soy and that beautiful lobster meat with the rice bringing it all together, that is a rice dish to write home about, folks.
Speaking of lobster you got to check out the Cisco Brewers craft kitchen lobster roll. They sell these lobster rolls all year round. This is the way a lobster roll is supposed to be made. Just a nice, buttered toasted bun, a pile of fresh shucked lobster meat, and you don't need anything else, maybe nice chunks of claw knuckle meat in there, all that butter. This is the lobster roll of my dream. I love living in New England.
The best item on this whole menu might be the Korean style fried chicken sandwich. If you know anything about Korean fried chicken, it is fried twice, so it's super crispy on the outside, super juicy on the inside, and has a chili glaze, plus some kimchi aioli and scallions on a super fluffy, seeded brioche roll. This may seem like a simple sandwich, but it's not. It's like a symphony of flavors and textures. Don't think you're gonna share this sandwich. You will definitely finish it yourself, and you'll probably order a second one to go.
On the comfort food side of things, check out this bowl of buffalo mac and cheese. You have a mix of cheddar and gruyere. You have some toasted breadcrumbs on top, and then a nice pile of chopped up crispy fried buffalo chicken tenders. You got the spice, the butter, the pasta, the ooeyness, the gooeyness and the crispiness. This is definitely next level macaroni and cheese.
Here, nobody leaves at the end of their meal. They are either sticking around to have some fun and drink beers, or at least to get a dessert. One of their signature desserts is the strawberry shortcake. They actually bake their own oversized biscuits here all day, every day. This thing is summertime on a plate. The number one selling dessert is definitely the Surfer Sundae. You have a huge, oversized, warm fudge brownie topped with a couple of scoops of coffee ice cream that's drizzled with caramel and then another brownie goes on top, along with some whipped cream and crumbled Heath Bar. One spoonful of this sundae and you are never going to want to leave.
There are just immaculate island vibes throughout this whole complex. You have fresh food, an unbeatable atmosphere, awesome crap. Left beers basically Cisco Brewers Kitchen + Bar is the place to be any season of the year. And by the way, the beers are great too.
