BB Rover’s Cafe & Pub

Second time I have been over here and if it was a bit closer to the house I would definitely be a regular.
1^st — the food is surprisingly good. There are lots of options on the menu from the traditional bar food (burgers, pizza) to jambalaya, pastas, and shepard’s pie
2^nd — staff is always knowledgable and engaging.
3^rd — great beer list and appropriate prices. Also have good wine list as well as full bar.
4^th — much more of a dive bar than a stuffy bar which is nice to see in Austin!
Go visit this gem in the back of the strip center off of 183.

I love this place! The best drink for me is Goose island sofie mix ½ with ranger creek purple Rhine

Been here a few times now and always have a great time. Great selection of brew’s and the list changes alot. Its a more mellow atmosphere and nice after a long day of work

Service has gotten worse than a year ago. Super lazy servers. Got our food order wrong and gave nothing but attitude when we questioned it. Try the beer and pizza joint just down the road — much better experience and tap selection

It is really hard to rate this place. I’d give it 4.5 stars for beer 1.5 stars for everything else.
Let’s start with the positives.
Beer
The tap list while not the longest in Austin, carries a number of different styles, and features many local breweries. The best part is the pricing. Their beer is priced very reasonably, and they sometimes have specials on beers that make them downright cheap.
The bottle list is vast, carries many different styles, from breweries all over the country, and has seasonal selections. They did not seem to fall into the trap of having hundreds of bottles 99% of which are past their best by date. The 4 IPA bottles we ordered were quite fresh. Again, the prices are very, very reasonable. Some bottles that stood out to me as being exceptional were only $ 4 more than Spec’s for 22Oz.
Atmosphere
This place is a classic local bar, updated with a great beer game. I enjoyed the table tops which features labels from breweries last open in the 80’s, in the back room they have a classic bottle collection from long closed breweries like Celis and Pete’s wicked (before they got bought out and ruined), and even a Zima bottle, fun little trip down memory lane.
It is definitely a regular’s bar, but the interaction I had with the regulars was great. Everyone in the place seemed really nice. There was none of the cold shoulder you can sometimes get as a newcomer in a local’s bar.
Now, on to the negatives.
The food
Look, the food is terrible. Everything they serve seems to start out frozen and/​or pre-​packaged. The burger, clearly a frozen patty. The cheese on the Nachos? From a can. The Macaroni and Cheese bites, frozen in a bag.
The chili may be from scratch, but wasn’t very good.
Have not had the Pizza personally, my friend who has eaten there before said the Pizza is passable, if greasy.
The Service
The service was just as bad. Yes, I was there on a busy night for them. However, it would not have been a problem for any other restaurant of a similar size. They had 2 servers, a bartender and a manager. So, plenty of staff. I asked for waters for the table 3 times, I never got them. We had to resort to grabbing the attention of whichever waitress we could to ask for another round of beers. Our check took over 20 minutes to arrive, and I had to flag the waitress down to even ask for it.
Having said all that, I’ll be back, I’ll just eat first.

This is a first rate neighborhood bar.
A long and fine selection of beers.
Good music. (They were playing old metal when I was there.)
A good kitchen. (More on food below).
A nice friendly family atmosphere.
A pool table if you want one … the normal sports TV. and there is live music on the right nights (or the wrong nights if you don’t like that particular band).
I ordered a barbecue pizza — a local concoction with lots of kielbasa, bbq sauce and a bunch of other meats.
It took a while to come because it was being hand made — and it was not the normal time for pizza.
(The bartender — who was as nice as he could possibly be — suggested the daily special — which was already all made up and could have been in front of me in a nanosecond. The special probably would have been just fine.)
The pizza was an honest non-​corporate pizza.
Very thick whole wheat crust with a lot of taste.
Tons and tons of meat.
I ordered the small and the thing was huge.
If you order the large, make sure that you have the Jolly Green Giant and King Kong with you to help you eat it.
The pizza was fine with beer …
but the superthick honest crust had the side effect of drowning out a lot of the flavors of the toppings.
(there is a reason italians put super-​seasoned ingredients like pepperoni, hot sausage and anchovies on pizza. they want the topping to win the battle with the crust.)
so if i ever went back and ordered pizza — i would probably order a model with stronger tasting ingredients.
but i left having drunk well, having eaten a lot of real home-​made food and was basically happy.
My normal preferred bar haunts are places with 48 esoteric rye whiskeys and places that make elaborate cocktails that were invented yesterday.
But for a neighborhood bar, I don’t see how you are going to do better than B B Rovers.
So leave your hipster friends at some record launch east of Comal, get your high school friend who lives just west of Anderson Mill and take her to B B Rovers.
You will have a better time than you would have drinking lavender flavored tequila and listening to a rancid new EP.

Great local place, lots of beer choices, good service. I look forward to visiting again.

So after my previous review from back in February of this year, I went back into Rover’s today, as I’ve been doing a couple times a month now, just to see how things were going, I was met, or rather accosted, by the bar manager James Kuemmel who proceeded to light into me about my Unilocal review.
What follows is the outline of how you run a failing business into the ground.
Mr Kuemmel, whom I’ve known as bartender there for years and now the bar manager, proceeded to give me «what for» about my review. To which I replied that it was the way I felt, and challenged him to point out one thing that wasn’t true in my review. He responded that I should have came to him rather than going onto Unilocal.To which I pointed out to Mr. Kuemmel that I had indeed spoken to him, as well as the owners of the bar. No one listened to me, pointing out that I have every right to post a review on Unilocal,stating my opinion and my experience there, which is precisely what I did. Mr. Kuemmel then told me to leave the bar and not come back. Isn’t it ironic that absolutely NO ONE there cared about my opinion, or what I was pointing out, UNTIL they saw it in print on Unilocal and believe me, these were only the top issues I’d addressed here.
Because my ONE review on Unilocal is killing his business, Unilocal, is killing his business. Well Mr Kuemmel. there is indeed a problem there and reason why your business is in the toilet. It is NOT, however, the fault of my review or Unilocal in general
So fair warning Unilocalers, if you care for frequenting this establishment, it appears you’re required to kiss the owner’s & mangers turd cutters or you’ll might risk being banned as well.

I probably like this place more than I should. This is a total neighborhood bar with many regulars. They’ve easily been in business for as long as I’ve been alive. The first time I stopped in here on a Saturday night, it was almost dead. The patrons were friendly, and we witnessed some words between the bartender and a recently banned regular of many years while we were enjoying our Sam Smith beers on the patio. Our server was nice and the bartender apologized for what we witnessed.
We tried the food and I liked the fried mac n cheese bites, of course! Typical bar food, nothing fancy or pricey. Gets the job done. The main attraction is the beer. Their draft selection is always changing and I found my new favorite beer here! Revolver wheat wine! Their selection of bottles is insanely long, easily up there with Flying Saucer. For the northwest Austin craft beer enthusiasts, BB Rover’s is the shit.

Been going here for over 20 plus years and Stacey as the best waitress EVER!!! #bestwaitressever!

Small place. Good for chill hangouts. Large beer selection. Bar tending staff very knowledgeable of what they have and recommends great choices.

Not sure I want to talk too much about this place; it’s my hiding spot with amazing beer selection and great food. If you’re looking for frills go somewhere else, but if you like a relaxing place with good beer, give it a shot! One of the last places in Austin that hasn’t been overrun with migrants, snobs or hipsters.

4÷7÷14 — Ate here before meeting business meeting. Had their meatloaf lunch special that was fairly good. Small dive bar with great patio that wraps around in an L overlooking the parking lot.

Didn’t really know what to expect when coming here. I heard they have live music and beer. I really enjoyed their beer menu. Very good choice! The music was not my type. Mostly because it was targeted to the 55+ audience and they all seemed to enjoy it. This place is a great local spot for beer and bar food and I don’t mind the music of their beer selection stays as good as it is.

I like hole in the wall places. They usually have the best food. We ordered three pizzas. Individual cheese, individual meat lovers and a medium cheese, sausage and pepperoni. It was just blah. It didn’t have much taste. All the meats were good but the sauce was blah. Also way too much cheese. They do have an awesome variety of beers and our hot wings were good

Came here just to drink beer with some friends late on a Saturday night. The beer lists was surprisingly good for someplace this far north. They had some good beers that I hadn’t seen around all that often including Mysterium Verum barleywine from Real Ale and a tap from Jolly Pumpkin. The taps also seem to rotate through pretty quickly, which is good since you get to try different things more frequently.

I love BB Rover’s. My fiancé are amateur beer snobs and love their massive variety of brews. They have excellent daily specials and it’s so close we can ride our bikes (which is sometime necessary). Their service is the only reason I’m holding back a star. We’ve had one or two outstanding waitresses, but more often than not get the non-​attentive ones.

Came for a beer release event as they had Founder’s Kentucky Breakfast stout tapping, and stayed to try Firestone Walker Sucaba and had a mushroom bacon cheeseburger for dinner.
The ambiance of the place is either lacking or spot on depending what you want. It feels like something out of the 80’s that hasn’t changed much and is a kind of sticky floor seeming spot. Not particularly relaxing or interesting to me, but they have a ridiculously large beer list. I’m not sure how fresh all those bottles can be considering how relatively unpacked it was on a Friday night.
The burger was tasty and fresh. Not a greasy, juicy dripping burger, but more homemade tasting and flavorful but without being too spectacular. I certainly wouldn’t come here for the burger or food in general, but go for it, if you’re already drinking here and are hungry.
I didn’t try the pizza my wife had, but it didn’t look super appetizing to me. Tons of fresh roma tomatoes on top, but it seemed like the veggies weren’t baked with the pizza and looked like they threw them on at the end or after. She said it was average for what it’s worth.

What an odd little spot! After getting a pedi at US Spa (hey there hot stone massage) I walked into BB Rovers to support my HAAM brethren. The musician was doing her singer songwriter thing so I grabbed a table, popped up the laptop and took advantage of their free wifi.
The server didn’t bat an eye as I set up camp… in my little pedi flip flops. I ordered a sausage burger and a salad and just hung out. The sausage burger was pretty good — probably better with a bun — and the salad was iceberg. Served on those plastic camp plates.
What I dig about this place is that it’s not pretending to be anything more than a local dive-​y bar/​restaurant with a kickass beer selection and food that fills your belly. It’s unpretentious, inexpensive and located in north austin where bars with 101 beers on tap are few and far between.

My go to place in NW Austin when we want a good craft beer and some quality pub grub. Great selection of imported and domestic craft bottled beer plus excellent, though small, rotating tap selections.
Their food quality is solid. While it might not make you crave anything they have, what they serve is good stuff and fits in well with the place. If you are looking for some sort of trendy, gastropub, fusion, infused, or whatever the latest buzz is, go somewhere else. This is good old pub grub. They have pizza, burgers, sandwiches, and a couple of things you don’t find in most places like Shepard’s pie and steak and mushroom pie.