Boulder Tap House — Restaurant in Ames

I have been to BTH several times over the last 7 years, and it is my current favorite eatery in the Ames area.

I have gotten the Defibrillator burger 4 times, but this most recent trip, it was no longer on the menu. (Honestly, that's probably a good thing.😅)

The fries are delicious, the cheese curds are massive, and the burgers are tasty. I am not a drinker, so I can't really comment on the alcoholic drinks, though they seem to have a large assortment readily available, either bottled or on tap. As for soft drinks, they serve Pepsi products for the most part, with two options for root beers.

They serve bottles of Boylan, which is a pretty generic cane sugar root beer, as well as Barn Town Draft root beer. I have little positive to say about that, as it has no head and has a strong taste of artificial sweeteners, either aspartame or xylitol. Having Tourette's, artificial sweeteners are a strong trigger for my tics. That, along with the underwhelming taste, caused me to not finish the drink. The waiter was very friendly, and quickly replaced my unconsumed glass with a bottle of Boylan at no extra charge. We went in as a group of 8, and we all felt we had good service.

As a group, we had burgers, fries, wraps, mac and cheese (my toddler), and a few drinks. Everyone enjoyed their meals and finished completely, except my toddler. You'll notice that trend in this review.

The burger I ordered had a sweet-glazed bacon, beer onions, and cheese. My infant daughter was fussy, so I forgot to take any pictures. The pictures I have are from a previous visit, showing the Defibrillator burger, which was an absolute unit of a burger, while it was on the menu.

Anyway, BTH has some of the best French fries I've ever had, and overall, it's definitely worth trying out if you are in the area. The price is reasonable, at around $15-$20 per person sans alcohol.

A little loud at times, as is any sports bar, but otherwise, I would highly recommend it. The only one who didn't like her food was my three year old, but that's not unexpected. Overall, 12 out of 15 individual category stars, and 5 out...

Came in for the 2nd time ever in early winter. They gave us a gift envelope that said "don't open until your next visit in 4 weeks more or less) and open in front of staff". So we held onto the envelope and went back about a month later and opened the envelope with our server. 50% OFF APPETIZER. Cool. Good on a future visit after the new year. Ok. My husband noticed the coupon needed to be signed by the server so he asked "don't you need to sign this"?. Server says nah, it's cool. Just come back and turn it in next month. We go back again a month later and order our appetizer(literally worth $8) and give our server the 50% off coupon. Server says oh, we can't accept this. It's not signed. We tell our server the whole story. Server says oh well. I've NEVER asked for a manager but did this one time. Explained the situation and also how we're here every week or two and seriously, we didn't forge this coupon that looks like their coupons to get $4 off. Lol? Manager acts super irritated and lectures us but finally agreed to give us $4 off. We aren't effing kids try to pull one over on anyone, ffs. We're in our 50s and 60s. We did everything they told us we needed to do to get a FOUR DOLLAR DISCOUNT then treated us like criminals. Needless to say, we've never set foot in there again, never will, and tell everyone we know to go elsewhere. And yeah, I've only lived here 2 years, but the number of people I know here in town keeps growing and every single time someone tells me they're heading out to get food, I say I hope you enjoy your meal. Btw, don't go to BTH. They're jerks and there are plenty of places to eat in town just like them. *ETA after response from BTH - I didn't specify winter 2024 because it was irrelevant. And after your response, where you yet again insinuate that I'm not being honest about a $4 coupon, I can see we made the right decision about...

Visited The Boulder Taphouse today for lunch. Gobs of tvs all around the walls, plenty of windows to see out of, very bright. Bartender started us out with country music at 130 db, then finally decided on the Cubs game at a lower volume. The booths have fixed tables which made a tight fit, so we opted to move to a high table, whiched rocked back and forth. The bathrooms were clean and nice. Free wifi, no bike racks, dont deliver or cater. They use my town 2.0 Service was excellent, waitress was very friendly, motivated, said she loves working there and her job. Tried the Sweet Jerk wings which were some of the best I've ever had, crunchy outside, juicy inside, more sweet than heat, better than places that specialize in wings, imho... Followed that up with the Defibrillator burger, at 15 bux what a burger! I'am thinking it was developed to combat the Emmenecker burger at Jethro's, two half pound burgers, 4 slices of bacon, uncounted slices of Cheese, pickles, jalapenos, thousand island dressing, lettuce, onions, and on top were two two inch deep fried cheeder cheese blocks, all in the burger was pretty good, decided to attack it with fork, doubt i'd get again, its a chore! Overall a very good visit, would reccomend! 2nd visit today. It was fairly busy at noon, had the spicy garlic boneless wings, not bad, they were garlicky though not much spice to them. Also tried the Jalapeno Popper burger which came with Frenchs onion rings on top. Mine had the Jalapeno taste going on, with the heat going, but I think didn't get salted when cooked, which helps with the taste. Was still juicy when it got to me, I did notice a couple of pink spots in the burger though. The jalapeno fries are just the fries with grated jalapeno on them, not bad though... overall came out to $30 with tip. Still fast...