Bootleggers Restaurant & Brewery

First visit since reopening. Looks great & nice to see they saved historical architecture. Well done crew! Food & service were quite good. Chicken Tortilla soup was too salty. Cheeseburger was thick & juicy with all the expected trimmings. Spaghetti Bolognese was too acidic but I added a packet of sugar & a tablespoon of ketchup which balanced it out nicely. I’m used to the sweetness of carrots in my Bolognese sauce! Ambiance is terrific in an old bank building on the square! Look in the old vault, too! This is a good spot for a day trip to antique or a unique weekend dinner date. Lunch prices average $ 9 & dinner entrees $ 20.

I have eaten here several times and I love the food ad the atmosphere. it’s a great place to eat. I will keep going back there to eat for many years to come

First visit since renovation and new owners. Food was good. The meal portions were acceptable but was very disappointed by the spinach dip appetizer portion-​very chintzy for the price. The steaks were alright but would be better if thicker cut.

Unfortunately we did not get good service. The cashier did compliance about them not being prepared for the large crowd they received. We had a hard time getting refills and it took maybe 20 to 30 mins before we received our tickets.
I wasn’t overly impressed with my food either. But by no means was it nasty. I prob should have chosen something else. I did sample that catfish and it was pretty tasty.
The portions are out of this world! You will def get full!

Good food and good service. Meals are slightly pricy but still a good place for a nice sit down meal.

Service was very slow tonight. Tenderloin steak is not a filet.
My daughter ordered the Fish basket. The order is huge.

I have eaten in Bootleggers several times and I have always gotten great food and service.
I LOVE the Chicken and Broccoli Soup!
The different pasta dishes are always hot and delicious!
No matter what you order, you always get huge servings.
Unfortunately, the beer was nothing to write home about.

Love the old bank atmosphere and the food was great. I had a tortellini dish and it was fantastic. Would definitely go back sometime.
I love to see local places like this that are unique, have nice atmosphere and great food. These days most of what you see are the same chain restaurants in every town you pass through.
I would give it a 5, but it was just a tad on the pricey side in my opinion. My meal was in the $ 13-​$ 14 and I would have thought $ 9-​$ 11 more appropriate. The portion on my pasta was enormous, I’d like to see them reduce that and the price along with it.
If you’re passing through Aurora I’d definitely recommend this as my first pick. If you are looking to stay under $ 10/​person, check out Hawg Wild just a couple blocks away.

This place was soo unexpected! Driving through a tiny town in southern Missouri, you don’t expect to come across a microbrewery. We did the $ 5 sampler, which included 4oz samples of 8 Bootlegger Brews. While I agree with another reviewer that the beer was often one-​note, I loved the concept and effort put in here… Pale ale, Dark wheat, Blueberry Pilsner were ok. My favorite was the Red ale though.
Fresh bread was brought when we sat down. The huge entrée salad I got was full of cajun grilled chicken, crisp romaine, and eggs, and I loved the homemade lemon-​poppy seed dressing ($ 6.99). The food in general was a steal, and the sweet potato fried and sandwiches looked great with very generous portions (though I didn’t sample either).
I would definitely go back if in the area!

great, try the raspberry wheat beer

Myself and the wife usually stop in for a bite and a beer when we are in Aurora. I find the food is usually tasty (at least what I have ordered). I do find the craft beer to beer pretty good though others have not.

The food is good, but the micro-​brew beer isn’t very good. The ambiance was good. I like the bank building that it is in.
Go enjoy the food. Only the food.

The beer does leave something to be desired BUT I specifically only like Killians, Fat Tire and Amber Bock and they don’t have a microbrewed beer to compare. The ambiance as other reviewers have said is great and the people that work there are great. They have a good selection of food but some of it is more «pre-​prepared» than others. They have a great prime rib which comes served in a pool of au jus and the club sandwich is quite good too. Many people enjoy the cajun chicken sandwich and the reuben is quite good too. Naturally though like any restaurant they have some things that are better than others. I’ve been eating there for 7 years and don’t regret that at all! Oh yeh and final note make sure to leave room for the brownie and ice cream! It is GREAT!

Tonight I ate at Bootleggers as part of a family reunion with about 20 other people. The results were mixed, at least on my part. I enjoyed the bread and butter that were put out as appetizer, but the other food I had left something to be desired.
I had the sampler and found the beer, as other reviews here have noted, was subpar. There was very little differentiation between the beers; they were generally weak and bitter and if I had closed my eyes and taken a random sip I would have had a hard time telling them apart.
I ordered a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. It’s probably my own fault; I should have known better than to order something that depended on restaurant tomatoes. The tomatoes were pinkish to whitish and had very little taste. Though the BLT was quite large, and the rest of it was all right, the lackluster tomatoes entirely spoiled the effect. I should have gone with my first impulse and had a Reuben instead.
The battered french fries were good, though – or at least, they would have been if they had been even the slightest bit warm when they arrived instead of stone cold. (It took a considerable length of time for the orders to arrive.) Of course, the fact that there were twenty people and only one or two waitresses to handle all the orders could account for that.
I will say that the private room we had was fairly nice, with a shuffleboard table and a big-​screen TV in it (though I did not actually have any use for either of these amenities), as well as a counter where I was able to plug in and charge my laptop – and they had free wifi which was reasonably fast. And beleaguered as she was by all our orders, the waitress was at least a nice person.
It’s not likely that I will eat there again, given that I am not local to the town, but if I did I would be more careful what I ordered, and would try to eat in a smaller party so my food got there faster.

Really good food, but not the beer.
We came here after a full day of visiting a customer site with our customer for a good dinner.
Ambiance: LOVE IT! Bootleggers is an old converted bank in the middle of a sparsely populated town called Aurora. The inside is still very bank like with the old school teller window on your right as soon as you walk in with the restaurant up front and a small bar hidden in the back on the way to the restrooms.
Food: EXTRA TASTY RIB-​EYE! I ordered the rib-​eye with the baked potato and a Caesar salad, and even though they did not cook the steak to my specifications at first, once I got it back it was bursting with flavor! The potato and the Caesar salad were both just fine, but nothing to Unilocal home about.
Beer: MEH! My coworker and I ordered the beer sampler and I have to agree Craig B. that the beer sampler, while a beauty to look at, was basically a bunch of different colored beers that tasted pretty much the same, not to mention bitter.
Service: The waitress mixed up the orders which is why I had to send my steak back, but she was really good other than that and was on top of things the rest of the time.

I love Bootleggers! Whenever I visit my family in Aurora, I have to make a visit or two to the restaurant. The service is always great! I have tried various dishes there including sandwiches and salads, and they have always been good. This past time my sister and I each ordered a ribeye, and it was fantastic. Both steaks were prepared perfectly to our request and tasted delicious. I know that I will continue to visit Bootleggers when I am in town, and in the meantime, my family will be there frequently without me.

I stopped by here yesterday especially for the beer. I have been traveling for work in the Joplin, MO area and was craving a good craft beer. I asked in the local Cheddar’s if there were any microbreweries nearby and the closest we came was Bootleggers in Aurora, a good 50 minute drive. I opted to visit bootleggers the very next day.
Bootleggers is a restaurant that used to be a bank building. The beer itself is housed or made inside the old bank vault. Upon entering I was greeted by three waitresses that stood behind the old bank teller windows.
I ordered the french dip which was described as thin sliced prime rib. It was tasty, but did not resemble prime rib. I also ordered a flight of their beer. Six beers arrived. To my palate they all tasted the same except for the stout. I asked how long they had been brewing and learned that both the brewery and restaurant have been there 12 years. I wonder if the local water supply impacts the flavor of the beer.
At any rate I applaud the restaurant for crafting their own beer. Every town needs one or more local craft breweries.