Friday Food Feature with Berks County Eats: Black Sheep Tavern

By Zach Brown, Berks County Eats

Speakeasies hold a fascination in the American mind a century after prohibition came and went.

Last year, we visited A Light in the Attic, which bills itself as a “modern speakeasy.” It’s a fun concept. They did up the theme with a bookcase at the top of the stairs and a curtain keeping the restaurant “hidden.” But that’s all it is, a concept.

The Black Sheep Tavern really was a speakeasy.

The restaurant and bar opened at the former Camelot Inn on Fritztown Road in the spring of 2025. The building’s story is told at the bottom of the menu. Apparently, it was owned by Ralph and Anna Riffert during the 1920s, and they operated a speakeasy throughout Prohibition, “despite paying fines for selling alcohol, gambling, and other illicit activities.”

It’s certainly ironic that 100 years later, guests not only can pony up to the bar for a drink but sit down at a skills machine.

The skills machines are set in a back room off the main dining area, which is filled with low- and high-top tables with a banquette along the wall. The U-shaped bar takes up most of the second half of the space.

It was quiet when we arrived for lunch on Friday, just one other table filled, though a few people arrived later during our visit. Our server was fantastic throughout, and I suspect she would have been great even if she would have had a full dining room. But she came to our table quickly to get our drink order and answered all of our questions about the menu.

And we did have a few questions because all of the sauces have names that are connected to the restaurant’s theme, like sheep sauce, rumrunner sauce, and mobster sauce.

My burger came topped with rumrunner sauce, which is their homemade version of A1. It also featured Cooper Sharp cheese, lettuce, tomato, and onion.

The burgers are listed as hand-patted, and you can tell by the thickness. It was a hearty meal, and a delicious one. The sauce was really good — I love steak sauce on a burger — and it worked well with the creamy Cooper cheese.

I opted for fries on the side, which were also very good, lightly seasoned with salt and pepper.

Julie had fries with her burger, the Bulger, which came topped with cheese, lettuce, tomato, red onion, and sheep sauce. Sheep sauce is their ketchup-mayo mashup, and Julie enjoyed every bite of her burger.

And while Julie also found the fries to be OK, she had the opportunity to go back a few days later with some of her coworkers. Her recommendation: get the sweet potato fries with the dipping sauce. They are totally worth it.

Our visit ended up being a perfect lunch. The food was out quick, too, so we were in and out of the restaurant before anyone could miss us at work. And at $40 for burgers, fries, and drinks, it felt like a fair price, too.

Maybe the experience is a little different during busier times — we drove past on a Sunday afternoon and there wasn’t a space to be had in the parking lot — but we really enjoyed our experience. (Obviously, Julie already went back for more).

The history of the building is fun, but thank goodness we’re not living with prohibition, because it means I can blog about it without risking a raid.

BCE Rating
Food: Good
Service: Excellent
Ambiance: Very Good
Price: $$

Black Sheep Tavern
665 Fritztown Road
Sinking Spring, PA 19608

This story was contributed courtesy of Berks County Eats, a local resource for food and dining information. Berks County Eats is dedicated to promoting the dining scene in Reading and Berks County, PA, offering restaurant reviews, news, and events, and a comprehensive Berks County restaurant directory. You can read more at berkscountyeats.com.

The post Friday Food Feature with Berks County Eats: Black Sheep Tavern appeared first on BCTV.

Source: bctv