New Boise bar opens with ‘very different’ menu. It’s ‘darn good’ — even ‘amazing.’

Jeff Wallace comes across as ambitious but modest — a hard-working small-business owner.

He works up to 12 hours daily at his new Broken Tap Tavern, 6555 W. Overland Road. “I take Sundays off, and that’s about it,” Wallace says. He takes COVID-19 precautions seriously, too. “We’re doing everything you can possibly do.”

And despite being the owner, he’d rather say the food is “pretty darn good” — like he did on Broken Tap’s Facebook page — than claim it’s the best in the universe. “I hate when people do that,” Wallace says with a laugh. “Food is subjective.”

That said, he can be coaxed into sharing a complimentary opinion or two. The goal of the Broken Tap is to be the neighborhood bar in the Boise Bench area, he says. Opened Nov. 20 at the Shops at Borah Heights, the friendly hangout took over the former Footbridge Tavern space. That bar closed near the end of last winter.

Aside from 16 beer taps, six wine taps and a handful of canned cocktails, the menu is the featured attraction. The array of appetizers, salads, soups and sandwiches isn’t what you might expect to find at a local pub.

“I love our food,” Wallace admits in a phone interview. “We have a very different menu than you typically see at a bar. It’s more of a flatbread-style menu. It’s all ovens. None of the grease and the fryers and the burgers and that kind of stuff.”

Take, for example, the Forest Mushroom Flatbread ($11.95)? “Lights out,” he says.

Or the Southwest Potato Wedges ($2.95 side/$4.95 platter)? “Amazing.”

And don’t forget the Buffalo Balls ($7.95 six-piece, $13.95 dozen) — “a great meatball we’re doing with six different sauces,” Wallace explains. (Try the garlic cream or mango habanero.)

Other big sellers? The Chicken Bacon Ranch Sandwich ($11.95). And the Crispy Spiced Brussels ($2.95 side/$4.95 platter).

Craft beer

Open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week, the Broken Tap strives to be a clean, welcoming destination with quality food-and-drink choices, Wallace says. “We do have good food, and a good, safe place.”

Unlike Charlie Brown’s Lounge down the road, the Broken Tap does not have a liquor license. But Wallace is OK with that. Hard alcohol creates a different dynamic, he explains. “It’s not as family-friendly, it’s just not as people-friendly. For the local tavern, we wanted to have that craft drinker, beer buddy kind of mentality — where you know where you can get a great stout or a great IPA, and you also know you can get a Coors Light or a Bud Light for the locals.”

Beer nerds can sip local, regional and national styles ranging from IPAs to pilsners, pale ales to brown ales — and beyond. “And, of course, Guinness on nitro all the time,” Wallace adds. (One of the taps pours a hard cider, too.)

The Broken Tap also sells packaged beer to-go — four- and six-packs of specialty labels not normally found on draft.

Early feedback has been encouraging, Wallace says. A COVID-cautious customer on Facebook recently described his Broken Tap eating-and-drinking experience as “one of the best afternoons since this crazy pandemic started.”

Words like that make the long bar shifts worth it. “It’s definitely paying off,” Wallace says. “And it’ll only get better as the pandemic kind of comes to a close, whenever that is.”

Back in July, when Wallace leased the 2,400-foot space, he was hoping the coronavirus might be fading by the time he received his licensing. “I honestly figured, by the end of the year, we’d be opening at about the right time,” he admits with a chuckle. “But it just didn’t happen.”

COVID won’t last forever, though. By next spring, Wallace figures, maybe he’ll be able to get the dart league fired up. For now, the Broken Tap’s 90-capacity room holds 35 socially distanced, seated people. As long as everyone’s happy and comfortable, he can live with that.

“We’ll do it the way we need to do it until this thing does go away,” Wallace says. “So far, the neighborhood’s been great. The locals have been awesome. Everybody wants to have a local tavern.”

This story was originally published December 11, 2020 at 4:00 AM.