Eatery banks on culinary success

Bootleggers Restaurant & Brewery at 101 S. Madison in Aurora, doesn't look like most other restaurants. That's because it's housed in an old bank building that was constructed in 1888. The eatery, which opened in February 1998, is owned and operated by Shawn Briggs and his brother-in-law, Scott Young.

Briggs and his parents, Brad and Cheryl Briggs, originally operated a restaurant across the street from Bootleggers. "We were there across the street for five years. ... About three years in over there, they bought this building (to move over here)," Shawn Briggs said.

Brad and Cheryl Briggs sold their portion of ownership to their son and Young in 1999. Shawn Briggs said his parents still own the building that houses the restaurant, but that's the extent of their involvement with Bootleggers.

Bootleggers, in several ways, still has the look and feel of an old town bank. The cashier's station at the front of the restaurant is inside a replica of the old teller's station that used to be in the bank, which, in later years, was used as an office building. Briggs said a friend built the teller's station using an old photo to duplicate the original look. As for the vaults, Briggs is putting them to use these days for a different type of "gold."

The vault on the first floor, inside the restaurant, houses a microbrewery, and the vault below it, in the basement, is used to store the different types of beer as soon as they're brewed.

"Microbrewing is something that I've always wanted to do, Briggs said. Billed as Home Brews on tap at Bootleggers, brews include Light Wheat, Amber Wheat, Dark Wheat, Raspberry Wheat, Black-Eyed Stout, Blueberry Pilsner, Pilsner Dark Bock, Red Ale and seasonal house special brews. Briggs said the eatery also sells its beers by the keg for takeout and also on the menu are beer growlers 64 ounces of beer for $8.

"We are able to brew up to 20 kegs a week if we need to. Generally, we're at about 10 kegs a week," he added.

It was the beer, or more specifically, opposition to the brewery, that helped determine the restaurant's name. Briggs said that shortly before the restaurant opened, it still wasn't named. At a local city council meeting where people were speaking against opening a brewery in town, an old preacher said, "it's just like bootlegging," and it clicked, Briggs said.

In addition to the vault, the decor of the building includes other relics of the bank that was housed there. For example, framed calendars from 1905, which Briggs said were found in the old safe-deposit boxes, adorn the walls.

Also, on some of the tabletops, and in framed displays, are old invoices from the Aurora Bank, which were found behind the walls in ledgers that dated from 1888 to 1945.

"No one ever knew about them, apparently, and we just got the idea to decoupage them," Briggs said.

He added that while business is good at Bootleggers, there's still room for more. However, he said, while he and his partner have considered expanding into other towns, "we've kind of reached a happy medium here; we're doing well, and it's one of those things where you don't know if you really want to grow any more."

The restaurant, which seats 175, has 30 employees and is open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, and 11 a.m.-l0 p.m. Friday and Saturday. The eatery is closed on Sunday and Monday. The fare includes appetizers, specialty sandwiches, pasta and steaks.

"The steak business has just skyrocketed. Our walleye (also) is real popular. We've got a beer-battered walleye and a grilled walleye," Briggs said. On the weekends, when business sometimes warrants a 30-minute to hour-long wait for patrons to be seated, Bootleggers offers dinner specials not offered on the regular menu, Briggs said.

"Weekends are great. Weeknights could be busier," he said.

Bootleggers gets a lot of business from out-of-town patrons, and Briggs said because he hasn't advertised much, most of them come in by way of word-of-mouth.

"We get a lot from Springfield, Joplin, Carthage, coming up here now on the weekends," he said, adding that many Branson tourists find time to stop in during their travels.