Lizardville

I went here once on my way to Dover for some cans to bring camping (incorrectly checking into Winking Lizard), and then again on my way back home… what a place. It’s a beer store with a bar. What more could you want. The beer options are mostly high end, with only the fanciest of fancy beers really being on the shelves here. There are great Ohio beers, ones from around the country (including many from Michigan — go us), and a whole wall dedicated to imports.
The guy who helped me was great. No idea what his name was unfortunately, but he kindly hooked me up with a bottle of Prairie Apple Brandy Noir from behind the counter, which I’ve been wanting to try since forever. Many stores most people frequent probably wouldn’t give that kind of service, but I managed it here — though it probably has something to do with the fact that I spent about $ 120 on beer this visit…
Any time I’m driving to or through Cleveland I’ll be sure to make this my primary beer store stop — I don’t see any reason to not make it that. Highly recommended.

Love the place. Great «Rusty Nail»! Mixologist does a great job. I was recently disappointed at a «high end» bar in the area that didn’t even have Drambuie!!! Really???
5 stars for the drinks!

I come here to get make-​your-​own-​six-​packs and I’m usually in and out in a few minutes. They have a great selection of some fantastic beers. They also usually rotate out one of the shelves for seasonal beers: pumpkin during the fall, christmas ales during winter… etc. The servers walking around are helpful and willing to answer any questions you have. Drinks aren’t exactly cheap, but it is hard to find a lot of these bottled beers anywhere else.
The only problem? There still isn’t enough beer. I’ve almost run through all of them. Maybe I will start of the mead shelf next?

I have a love/​hate relationship with Lizardville.
LOVE: Their whiskey selection speaks to my soul. The bartenders are knowledgable and I’ve gotten to try some really good stuff. Prices aren’t bad and the physical atmosphere of the bar is what I’d want for a dark place to sip whiskey.
HATE: It’s a real «bro» hangout, which is great if you are a frat bro. The food is mildly acceptable, at best. My steak salad tasted like it was trucked over from Denny’s and topped with canned asparagus. My mate’s burger didn’t look much better.
Pro tip: Just go for the whiskey and skip the food.

Lizardville was quite the surprising treat! I had no idea what to expect when a friend said, «I go to a ‘whiskey bar’ on Thursdays, you guys should come too.» I’m not a whiskey drinker, and to be honest, the smell of it even makes me feel woozy, so I thought I was in for a night of Coca Cola and sobriety. HA. I had NO IDEA it was one of my new favorite eating/​drinking establishments: store AND dine-​in. I’m currently in love with anywhere that just has shelves of stock that you can choose to either purchase and take home or drink in-​house. I have no idea what has come over me, but I’m crazy about it.
The options here are seemingly endless and I had a really hard time deciding what to drink when I realized I wasn’t limited to soda or whiskey. The bartenders were super nice and chilled my beer from the shelf for me, then brought it to our table and poured it for me. We got the soft pretzels to snack on and the beer cheese dip was the obvious star of the plate. The pretzels weren’t amazing, but good filler for the delicious booze we were ingesting.
The atmosphere is really intimate and you feel like you’re in an old relative’s beer or wine cellar. It’s so low key and relaxed! I can’t wait to come back and only wish we didn’t have to trek all the way across town for this treat!

This is our favorite bar!!! It is located in the basement of winking lizard and has the same food as them.
The staff is friendly and incredibly knowledgable about all of their beers and whiskey! They always have my favorite gluten free beer in stock and it only takes two mins to chill it with their nifty beer chiller!
It is quiet and seems to aim for you to have a conversation, which is why we love it! (We’re very chatty humans!)
My fiancé adores the selection of whiskey a and bourbons and always looks forward to trying new ones!
Our only complaint is no Sunday or Monday hours and we miss them on those days!!!

The great staff and awesome brewery events at the Lizardville in Lakewood make it one of my favorite spots to grab a beer or hard to find whiskey. The first time I came downstairs I was amazed by the wall of beers and was welcomed by the knowledgable and warm staff to a mini tour of the new digs and info about an upcoming event with an amazing brewery Three Floyd’s! The event was really fun and was a great way to meet other Three Floyd’s freaks like me. After only a few times in, the great staff remembers my tastes and have great beers suggested for me and surprise whiskeys coming my way. I’m looking forward to a new patio and cigar selection coming soon for the summer time!

Every Winking Lizard should be a Lizardville!
My brother took me and Brian O. to Lizardville in Lakewood while we were in town visiting. We had a blast! They have a great cocktail list, an awesome small selection of beers on tap, and the shop which you can drink in house for a «corkage» fee or take to go.
It’s got a great «speak easy» décor and feel to it. It’s more intimate than Winking Lizard, but you still get all the good things about it. The great selections of craft beer and the decent, reasonably priced food, and better cocktails. We ordered pirogi, which were better than expected and under $ 8.
We each got a beer, my brother got a well made Manhattan, and I got a large bottle of Pere Jacques off the shelf that we enjoyed there all for under $ 50 after tip. A steal for such a great evening in a relaxed spot. Staff was super knowledgeable and approachable. It’s a place that would easily draw me as a regular if we had one in Cbus. I hope they work on that!

No real point going here unless you plan on buying beer to take home, as the selection is great (although most of
It is available at any beverage store around town) Drinking inside requires you to be subjected to the laziest of service and an extremely paired down menu. But the service is the real problem…
On my last visit, Upon grabbing a hitachino I was told by the server that «wow, id like to try that but I don’t make enough money» which is a real odd thing to say to somebody. She also managed to forget several of our drinks and told us she has a problem «remembering things.» We all
thought she was stoned. The topper was when the bill came she brought the check which was completely wrong, along with $ 10 cash asking me if this was
mine and if I left it at the bar. I shook my head and let her know how the experience was awful. She asks me if I want to speak to a manager and I said no, not really given the fact that I just told you how I felt and that I was ready to go. She walks away and the manager comes over and actually asks me if I used profanity towards her as that’s what she told him I did! Unreal. Outside of accusing me for something I did not do he was apologetic in a very assistant manager kind of way but at no time did he offer to comp anything off the bill or do anything other than stand there and fake apologize.
Needless to say, I won’t be going there again. The limited menu sucks and is essentially the same thing they serve upstairs, at the winking lizard. The stuff they do have on the menu that was carried from the old rocky river location isn’t as good here. It’s a real lack of attention to even the simplest of details that will kill this place. It’s practically empty already and it just opened.

There was a time when Tremont and Ohio City were some of the only neighborhoods in the city to drink decent beer during a night out on the town. Lakewood now has a placenta of options. Lakewood is the afterbirth of the craft beer movement in Cleveland with options like Beer Engine, Deagans and World of Beer to name a few. Lizardville is beer geek nirvana. It is down in the basement of the Lakewood Winking Lizard. I thought it would be similar to La Cav Du Vin without the French pretension. It was more open and sports bar-​ish. There were groups shooting the breeze and enjoying beverages on Friday night. This is a great place to come and relax with some friends and talk. If the City of Cleveland keeps giving me parking tickets and allows my car to be defiled by their streets, I will consider moving back to Lakewood. The City of Lakewood would have a float for me in the 4^th of July parade if so. The float would need to be equipped with giant speakers blaring Mark Morrison «Return of the Mack» while I dance around and shoot blank rounds into the air. Mayor Michael Summers will need to make that happen if they want the triple OG PW to move back.

It’s a great atmosphere perfect for the beer snob.
Now that they have a limited winking lizard menu (rather than their unimpressive, pretentious, over-​priced lizardville menu), the food is good. They did carry over the pretzel w/​beer cheese & mustard — which is delicious and you should get.
I love that I can grab a beer from the wall, set it on my table, and have it chilled and poured for me. And it happens right away b/​c the staff is super-​attentive (and knowledgable).
The only negative is that you pay $ 1.50 to drink a bottled beer. It’s their ‘drink-​in’ fee. One of the waitresses there had told me it was «$ 1.50 to get it chilled» but a friend of mine manages another Lizardville and confirmed it is a drink-​in fee. Not imposed by them… it has to do with laws about the way beers are priced at a ‘beer store.’ You can order a beer upstairs and bring it down with you if you want to save money.

Let me begin by saying that I was very excited when I heard that they would be moving the Rocky River Lizardville to the basement of the Lakewood Winking Lizard. I live in Lakewood so that meant it would be much closer to me and it seemed that nobody used the bowling alley in the basement anyway, so it made sense!
However, I was a tiny bit disappointed when they opened this location. Many of the things that I loved about Lizardville are still here: Great bottle selection/​build your own 6 pack option, amazing whiskey selection, very solid draft beers and an option to fill a growler, delicious beer cheese dip and awesome staff. This is enough to keep me coming back and I absolutely still recommend this place. It’s seat yourself and has a much more bar like vibe than Winking Lizard. Very fun environment and I always had a good time at the Rocky River one so I expect a similar experience in Lakewood (I have been to the new location once so far and had a good time).
That said, they changed the menu and I am let down by the changes. Lizardville had delicious flatbreads and a veggie burger. Note that Winking Lizard, located UPSTAIRS, also serves a veggie burger. However, Lakewood Lizardville. no veggie burger? And no more flatbreads — they’ve been replaced by the same pizzas you can order at Winking Lizard, which are pretty good but not nearly as good as those flatbreads were! I understand that they’re trying to be efficient — they have the supplies for pizza so they might as well put that on the menu instead of something else — but I am probably not going to be eating dinner at Lizardville anymore personally. I’m a vegetarian and don’t feel like this menu is nearly as diverse as it was before, nor do I understand the point of removing the veggie burgers from the menu when they clearly stock them upstairs!
Anyway, like I said, i still think this place is awesome, I just wish they wouldn’t have made so many menu adjustments. Many people might not care about them but I was bummed. I’ll mostly be coming here just to drink and I’ll snack on the beer cheese because I will say again that it’s DELICIIOUS. I just don’t care as much for the menu as a whole anymore. It used to be a step above Winking Lizard and they’ve basically brought it down to the same level, which is basically just decent bar food. Good but not amazing.

Of course I’m a Lizardville fan. They did a decent job turning the Elks bowling alley into a bar. It is SMALL, much smaller than the previous Rocky River location.
Same great staff. No, EXCELLENT staff.
My only complaint is the folks that come look from upstairs. Now, don’t get me wrong, that’s great… adds potential customers, great! But when they come down and complain about the weird beers or prices (yup, beer that isn’t Miller is pricier!), it is annoying to folks trying to enjoy said beer. And, leave the kids upstairs. Bleh.
But, I continue to love me the ‘ville, and I will persevere. :-)

Allow me to preface this by saying that I didn’t eat or drink here. I strictly came here to buy bottles to take home. This is my second favorite store ever, only behind Bass Pro Shop. They have every beer you can imagine, an insane amount of whiskey, and yes food too. This is my go to bottle shop when I’m looking for a hard to find or rare beer. If it’s distributed in Ohio, they have it. I can spend all day in this place.

This joint just opened in the basement area of Winking Lizard. Enter through the west side door in parking lot, or from Winking Lizard back bar.
Great beer and whiskey selection, just like other Lizardvilles. Space is a little small but not cramped.
Food menu is limited to wings, pizza, burgers, salad and a lone steak plus a few appitizers. Service here was great.