Mt Hamill Tap

About 15 min from Mt. Pleasant, Mt Hamill Tap was a very lively restaurant/​bar. I visited on Sat night about 6:00 and was surprised by the hunt for a parking space. There were about 200 people there. I heard the broasted chicken was very good so I ordered a half chicken dark meat. I got 2 thigh/​leg combos. Overall good chicken, but not the best I’ve ever had. The chicken is served on Wed, Fri, and Sat nights. A baked potato came with the chicken and included butter and sour cream. My wife got the salad bar and it was well stocked and good quality. FYI, the juke box steals quarters, you will have to put in dollar bills. Really nice wait staff and bartenders.

I made a short detour on my drive from Iowa City to St. Louis to try the fried chicken here (luckily I happened to be passing by on a Friday night), and it was definitely worth it. The town of Donnellson is so small that if you blink you’ll probably miss it, and this place doesn’t look like much from the outside — you’d guess it’s just an average roadside dive bar, except for the fact that there are dozens of cars up and down the road at 6 on a Friday evening.
When you walk in, it looks more like a church potluck dinner — families around big tables, eating off of paper plates. I got a half chicken, and it took quite a while to come out — I think about 45 minutes, basically everyone there was ordering chicken, and as far as I could tell the frying was a one-​man job, so every 5 minutes or so you see a new batch of fried chicken in the window, and then the waitresses take it to everyone but you… Luckily there’s beer to make the wait go by faster, and the beer was cheap! I think a Blue Moon was $ 2 or 3.
As for the chicken itself — the meat wasn’t quite tender enough to be the very best fried chicken ever (in my opinion anyway), but I loved the batter — it was thick and very crispy, and the pieces that flake off are great to crunch on. And with the sides, bread, slaw, etc. that come with it, you certainly won’t leave hungry.

Great salad bar and the best chicken ever! Definitely worth the drive.

Found this via Unilocal while driving down the highway. We arrived for lunch and had great burgers and cold beer. If in this neck of the woods stop by and check it out. A few miles of the highway but well worth it to escape the common fast food offerings which I always avoid.