There is a particular species of Massachusetts cigar smoker, and you can spot them any weekday in the parking lots of southern New Hampshire: they have driven forty-five minutes north across a state line for the privilege of not paying their own state’s excise tax, and they are pleased about it. The strip of Route 3 that runs through Nashua exists, in large part, because of them. And the shop that has been catching that traffic longer than almost anyone — a genuine New England institution — is the one that spent forty years as Two Guys Smoke Shop and recently decided it had earned a shorter name: 2 Guys Cigars.
The Backstory
David Garofalo opened the original Two Guys in Salem, New Hampshire in 1985, back when the store’s name was literally descriptive. Four decades later it is a family operation with three New Hampshire shops — Salem, Seabrook, and Nashua — a serious online business, and a résumé that includes co-hosting The Cigar Authority, one of the longest-running cigar radio shows in the country. The 2025 rebrand to 2 Guys Cigars came with new signage and refreshed branding, but the same rule that has applied since the Reagan administration: no sales tax, no excise tax, no apology about it.
The Room
The Nashua store sits on Spit Brook Road in the retail thick of it near the Pheasant Lane Mall — not a scenic address, but an honest one. Inside, the layout is classic New England tobacconist: a well-stocked walk-in humidor up front, and behind it the reason people drive past closer shops, the Red Anchor Lounge — a United Cigars flagship lounge that dropped anchor here in May 2023. And let’s be clear: this is an excellent smoking room. Comfortable, well-appointed, and unpretentious, the kind of space where an hour disappears without permission — the sort of lounge that punishes anyone who arrives with a tight schedule. The staff asks, when you buy a cigar, whether you’d like to smoke it right there, which tells you the lounge isn’t an afterthought bolted onto a retail floor. There is usually somebody in it, which is the whole test. The only real complaint we can muster is that the clock, not the room, decides when the visit ends.
The Humidor
The walk-in is the deep end: Arturo Fuente, Davidoff, Padrón, Ashton, Cohiba, Drew Estate, My Father, plus the robust house roster — Garofalo Family Legacy in three wrappers, the shop’s own Dos Hombres line, 40th-anniversary releases, and the occasional Big Papi by David Ortiz, because this is still New England and the Red Sox tax is apparently voluntary. The selection is genuinely national-retailer deep, not gift-shop deep, and the staff knows the inventory well enough to hand you something honest when you ask for a recommendation. The house blends exist for a reason; they are the closest thing this shop has to a signature, and they’re worth the experiment.
The Events
This is quietly one of the best event calendars in New England. The Nashua store hosts manufacturer visits on the regular — Micallef, Perdomo, HVC, and the traveling circus that surrounds The Cigar Authority‘s live shows — and the shop’s own releases (Firecrackers, anniversary cigars, the odd “world’s strongest cigar” stunt) tend to debut at the registers here. If you time a visit around an event, you’ll get the version of the store where the reps are pouring and everyone’s in the lounge. That’s the version worth planning for.
The Fine Print
Store hours are Monday through Saturday 10am–6pm and Sunday 10am–4pm. Read that again: six. This is the shop’s one genuine flaw, and it isn’t a small one for a lounge this good: a Churchill bought at 4:45 is a cigar you’ll be rushing, and a cigar you’re rushing is a cigar you’re wasting. The early close shrinks the window to savor a proper smoke down to a daytime affair — lunch-break smokers and Saturday-morning regulars are fine, but the after-work crowd never gets a seat. The Google consensus doesn’t seem to mind — 4.8 stars across more than 200 reviews, which for a cigar shop is practically a standing ovation — but Google reviewers don’t have to watch the sun hit the parking lot while there’s still an inch of cigar left. Yelp, ever the contrarian, sits at a more circumspect 4.0. The truth, as usual, is on the high end.
The Verdict
Rating: 4.5 / 5
2 Guys Cigars is what forty years of doing one thing in one small state looks like when you do it well: a humidor that embarrasses shops twice its size, a smoking lounge that’s genuinely excellent — comfortable, welcoming, and built for lingering — a staff that treats a first-timer like a regular, and an event calendar most cigar bars would trade a walk-in for. The half point goes to the clock, and it hurts: a lounge this good deserves hours that let you use it, and a 6pm close means the one thing the room asks of you — stay a while — is the one thing it won’t allow. Pair the visit with a Saturday event, arrive early, buy a house blend on the way in, and count your tax savings on the drive home. For Massachusetts smokers, this is still the most justified road trip in New England. Just don’t show up at five and expect to finish what you bought.
2 Guys Cigars Nashua — 15 Spit Brook Rd., Nashua, NH 03060 · (603) 891-2122 · 2guyscigars.com · Mon–Sat 10–6, Sun 10–4
