Community Inn Restaurant

Favorite neighborhood hangout. Great bartenders, always know someone when you walk in. Food, meh, but it’s bar food. Only negative is parking, but in Grandin Village, you can basically park and walk to wherever you need to go anyway.

This is my favorite bar in Roanoke. Great place to get a cheap drink or some good greasy food.
Service is great, burgers are good. I dig the dark old school atmosphere.

A great place to wind down and have a couple drinks. Staff is always pleasant and easy to talk to, and the same can often be said for the patrons. It’s occasionally a little noisy but if anything that’s a testament to their popularity. Very happy to have a place like this in my neighborhood.

Awesome place, great staff! CI shots are huge. Great food. Anything from a great burger to school pizza, to grilled cheese and tomato soup! Great place to hang out without being in the whole «downtown» environment

One of the best best burger I’ve ever had, you will need plenty of napkins. Also, they have the coldest beer! Great place

One of the best cheese burgers in town. Best neighborhood bar in town. Been a regular customer for 50+ years and always feel welcomed.

Perfection in any dive bar. Nice people, great on snow days/​nights. Familiar faces and literally THE COLDEST beer in Grandin Village, Im NOT kidding. The food is good for a small little place. I love the little corn-​dogs. This is a place that is a staple in out community. The drink options are good as well. They have pool tables in the back.

This place is warm and inviting. I seriously couldn’t ever ask for a better bar to be a regular. I love everyone here.

Nothing fancy here, but the food is good, the people are friendly and the beer is served ice cold. Pool table, smoking are, this is just a cool place.

great dive bar. good bottle selection. cheap beers (compared to new haven). came here to watch basketball and play pool after a long wedding weekend. staff was friendly, funny and social. we didn’t eat, but were tempted by the pimento cheese sandwich and various snacks. close to cute shops and the movie theater. wish we had more time to explore the neighborhood.

Just moved to the area and decided to check out the Community Inn or CI after all my new neighbors recommended it. Cool place, old school neighborhood bar. Love the cheeseburger and great beer prices. Staff was very friendly. My new favorite place to walk to.

went here before a movie at the Grandin Theater because the pretentious place up the street wouldn’t serve me a $ 14 burger because I came in 10 minutes before the end of their Sunday Brunch… service here was prompt and friendly enough… I had to try the bottle caps (deep fried jalapeños) which warmed me up and made the icy cold PBR draft ($ 2) go down quickly… Cheeseburger and tater tots were very good. The place was pretty crowded with what I determined to be regulars for the sports.4 different games showing. This is my definition of a solid neighborhood diner/​bar, I would not classify it as a «dive bar» at all. My new go to before or after movies now.

Not a bad local bar. I got my mini corn dog nugget fix and a cold beer. The cheese fries were mediocre at best. I enjoyed myself playing Jeopardy with the other bar patrons. Unless they were watching Jeopardy to be ironic, I definitely did not pick up on any hipster vibe. I would definitely come back.

When you have spent most of your money at the good bar with the decent drinks and edibles you come here and have a cheap bottle of Miller High Life and some tater tots because lets face it, you are broke and too drunk to care anymore and all your friends are here doing the same thing late at night. This place is especially great for local hipsters who will swear they aren’t hipsters and super old men who used to be local hipsters. Who cares? They are only separated by a few decades and a bit of liver damage anyway. The nouveau rockabilly types also like to hang here. The staff of mostly female servers and bartenders are delightfully surly and lets face it, you would be too with this crowd. Don’t think they will come to your table later in the evening because they won’t. If you can catch the attention of one of these bad@ss ladies they do make a stiff and cheap drink which is quite passable for late hour needs especially if you get something like a vodka and tonic, they will get your previously frozen, fried up, anti-​hangover stuff to you while it’s hot. They are also great at managing the inebriated crowd. Community Inn’s atmosphere with it’s grungy paneling from the 70’s reeks of hipster trap and there is even a little aquarium like cage full of the smoking ones in the very back. CI, as it is affectionately known the locals, does serve a need for late night drinkers who think they want to go to a dive but may be afraid to venture into the «scary» neighborhoods to go to an actual dive. I like this place ok and if I am in late night party mode I like it too much. I wouldn’t recommend CI to visitors. The regulars here are strangely judgey and they throw lots of attitude. Oh, just so you know, the overhead lights come on at last call and they are very, very bright and remember not to drink and drive through this middle class neighborhood which is heavily patrolled.

My husband and I love CI. We can go there in our cut off sweats and feel right at home. Strong mixed drinks, friendly service, good beer selection, and all sorts of deep fried goodness! Husband especially likes the bottle caps with a side of nacho cheese.

In from out of town, never went here while I resided in Roanoke. Met friends for drinks/​snacks here. Space-​wise, it’s pretty deep. Service was lacking, call me spoiled but I hate flagging people down for my drinks. The food was typical fare for dive bars.
Certainly worth going here with friends to make the experience, but otherwise, it’s your average bar environment.

I cannot say enough about how much I love this place. While some may misunderstand its nature or clientele, the essence of CI is that it is a family restaurant in the truest sense that does have a great late night bar crowd as well. The food often shocks people by how good and diverse it is. And it is by far the very best place in the Roanoke Valley to watch NFL or any sport really. Give this place a try, it was cool long before the neighborhood it is in became hip and trendy. And as testimony to its coolness it has changed very little.

The CI is the bomb! I think the perception of this place is that it’s a dirty dive bar, but honestly since the no-​smoking laws went into effect in Virginia, this place is a gem.
Drinks aren’t watered down, and a double bacon cheeseburger with tater tots is a guilty pleasure for sure.
If this is your neighborhood, feel fortunate that this is your neighborhood bar!

Community Inn (or the CI) is dive bar with cheap drinks and good greasy food. It’s a great unpretentious meeting spot nestled in trendy Grandin area — crowded, familiar, and friendly.
The bar itself is pretty tiny — one long bar and line of about a dozen booths, with a pool table and a smoking area. It’s run-​down and clean. Apparently there’s talk of a rooftop bar, which would increase my attendance exponentially.
I don’t go to bars for fancy beer as a general rule — I buy expensive shit from the grocery store and drink that at home — so I’m not familiar with their beer selection beyond their very cheap ($ 2 pint $ 7 pitcher) PBR. I usually don’t drink liquor since I drive home, but I have heard that they are quite strong.
I came here for dinner yesterday with a friend. We split a pitcher, and I got a $ 6 burger and $ 4 fried green beans. They were freaking delicious. Not health food, but the perfect complement to a cold pitcher. I love fried green beans, and theirs were just fantastic. The staff was friendly and helpful, too.
I’m planning on spending a good bit of my summer here. Hope to see you there!

Tired of the downtown meat market, the crappy music and the expensive drinks? Recently voted the «Best Bar Food in Roanoke,» the Community Inn lives up to it’s title with cheap, good, classic food. When I say classic… I mean it. When is the last time you had school-​house pizza? How about a grilled cheese? Add some tomato? Perhaps a burger with a side of tater tots? Nice.
So, to have the best bar food, you must be a bar. Indeed, the Community Inn (CI) is a bar, and a wonderful one at that. The ultimate Roanoke melting pot, this is a primary hotspot for hipsters, bikers, republicans, democrats, ex-​fratboys, artists, other bar owners, your local record store clerks, tatoo artists, rednecks, old-​timers and dart/​pool players. No one group can even come close to claiming it as solely their own, the CI is everyone’s. The bartenders are top-​notch and will not only look out for your drinks but you as well. The atmosphere isn’t unique, some booths, a long bar and TVs scattered around the ceilings, but it does the job. While CI may not be the fanciest joint in Roanoke, it’s the one place in Roanoke that anyone can feel comfortable in.