Billco’s Billiards & Darts Parlor

Visited on the Peter Hale Hates Beer tour, 01/02/16. Large open billiard hall, with some darts action also offered. Place is a little basic and rough around the edges - not somewhere I’d care to linger long! Plenty on tap although two points to factor in .... i) lots of filler and common pap. ii) can a place like this rotate so many different taps without compromising beer quality ? My take on the latter is no - a few hoppy beers just seemed too stale or off their best. Beers are rather annoyingly advertised on a computer screen above the bar that rotates slowly over 5 or 6 pages ... tedious! Service fine and friendly. Definitely worth checking out if in the area and likely the best selection on tap in the area but came across like a dive bar Yard House.

Recommended by our waitress at Downtown Joe’s. I was pretty confident it would be good, but I understand why one may be skeptical when approaching this place. It’s a divey pool and dart place with a lot of taps, no idea on freshness and I’m sure they don’t get a lot of keg turnover but the selection was pretty good nonetheless and the beer I had was in decent shape.

A somewhat improbable billiard hall/darts club/craft beer bar. The selection of beers is impressive in quantity (c. 60 beers on keg), but as you browse through the menu (which scrolls annoyingly slowly on a TV screen - high-tech, yet not quite there) you discover that there’s a lot of uninteresting stuff on offer. Nevertheless, we uncovered the more attractive options. The pricing was OK overall. The staff seemed cheerful enough, quite down to earth, and probably a bit entertained by our visit, during which time c. 10 men shared pints of obscure beers as if they were in a rush and then left leaving roughly 50% of all the beer unfinished. Some of the few locals shooting pool occasionally looked up to see what we were about, but they didn’t seem to mind our encroachment. Overall, this was kind of a fun place, and I can imagine it might get rather rowdy once the fellas get sauced up on Saturday nights. Maybe it was for the best that us geeks visited during the quieter afternoon hours.

Blue collar pool hall that inexplicably has 60 beers on tap. Prices were a bit touchy for the more interesting beers, which probably explains why many of them tasted as if they had been sitting around for a while. Still, there were some deals to be had. One person in my party opted for a $10 16oz pour of Lost Abbey Bourbon BA Angel’s Share. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend a visit, but it might be an OK option if you’re looking to get weird in Napa.

Pool/darts place with a huge selection of draft beers. A few were out at our visit though. Some of them seemed to have been on for quite a while. Prices fair for pints. Not amazing, but worth stopping by to cleanse your palate and restore your will to live after visiting Downtown Joe’s.

Billco’s is THE beer place to go in Napa according to our Downtown Joe’s bartender. It certainly has a lot of CA beers on tap, but only about 15% held any interest to me. Prices are too high, but Napa is full of suckers - tourists and locals - who spend too much on everything. Not that many tourists find themselves in a pool hall, and that’s what this place is. It has some dart boards on the walls, but 85% of the floor is pool tables. The interior is musty and dated, and feels like something from St. Louis’ Metro East area, the kind of bar I’d have wound up in on some wild bender during a summer between college years for no reason. A place time forgot. The bartender was friendly enough. They could maybe get a little more interesting with the offerings, but they probably don’t need to. I wasn’t really in the mood for this place, but can see where it can be the right thing for the right time and group.

A large pool hall with a good sized bar. Tons of taps with a good selection, only issue is age and cleanliness of the taps. Prices are great but no small pours. For a billiard hall, pretty amazing, but just for a stop I would check to see what is on.

Came here after Cadet. Definitely more of my kind of place. Not sure when I last visited a pool hall, but it was certainly before I could drink and I’m pretty sure they didn’t have a selection like this.

While there are a large number of tables to play on (and lots of dart boards), this seems to be as much of a bar as anything. Small bar, all things said, but a lot of taps. And a lot of good ones. Beers are listed on TV monitors overhead. The downside here is that the monitor can’t display all the beers at once, so they flash to a few different screens, so you’ve got to read quickly. All the beers come in a pint glass, it seems, which is fine.

Easily the largest and best beer selection you’re going to find, and it doesn’t close at 8 PM like everything else.

Went there after bottlerock festival. Very solid selection, especially of west coast hoppy beers. My brother got an Old Rasputin, and when I saw the pour I knew it was a nitro. I asked the bartender and she didn’t know what a nitro beer was. Ok, fine, but you’re primarily a beer bar. Your staff should at least know what beers are being served. The menu was also wrong in this regard. I had a Simtra Triple for $8 so I was fine w/ that, but underwhelmed by the staff. Definitely the best selection in the downtown Napa area that I saw. If you’re there anyway definitely go. But I wouldn’t seek it out as a stand alone.

Stopped in here recently on a business trip. Very cool place with a TON of pool tables if that’s your thing. Great beer on tap including Pliny (sometimes) and SN Bigfoot 2003. (mind you this is 2013) I was pretty excited to get a half pint of that bad boy… anyway, the server was friendly, but seemed a bit out of touch with the beers. No worries. I can handle myself just fine. It was a bit dead that night (Monday around 10 pm) but I can imagine this place gets pretty busy most days. I would frequent this place often if I was a local college student.