Brownies and Zucchini

Full Disclosure:  I paid for this meal with my own money and I was in no way reimbursed for this blog post.  The opinions are completely my own.

I’m not sure there has been a restaurant as hyped to come to Madison as AJ Bombers.  It seemed like their location was under construction forever, but it is finally here and open for business!  The husband and I went there last week to see what all of the fuss was about.   You see, their most famous location is in Milwaukee, WI and many of my friends had been there (many times) before and gave it rave reviews.  Oh, and they have been on a few different Food Network episodes as well.

So, the husband and I were downtown and decided to give it a try.  I should preface this with the fact that I do not like hamburgers – as you probably already know if you’ve been reading this blog for a while.  However, the husband definitely does like hamburgers so I was excited to take him there since I know they are kind of known for their burgers.

The overall atmosphere of the place is very fun and it fits right in on a college campus.  Every table has little table games, there is writing on the walls, and the waitstaff seem to all be young and hip.  We were actually there on a weeknight so it wasn’t too crowded, but I can imagine one weekends it gets pretty busy with the college crowd.

Their menu makes it really easy for you (and the waitstaff) to order, simply mark what you want, give it to your waiter, done.

The husband had the Barrie Burger….even though I know nothing about burgers, I had heard a lot of friends talk about the burger so I suggested he order it since it seemed to be pretty popular.  He said it was good, but he wasn’t blown away.  He also expected there to be more peanut butter on it.

He also had a side of poutine…..aka fries, cheese curds, and gravy. Again, he wasn’t blown away, but it was pretty good.

For my dinner I had the grilled chicken sandwich with cheese….and a side of fries.  It was definitely one of the best chicken sandwiches I’ve had! The chicken was juicy, the bun was soft, it was delicious.

….and I had a side of fried cheese curds. Well, they were really supposed to be an appetizer but everything was done so quickly that it all just came out together.  The cheese curds were really good too.  They were not as heavily battered as most restaurant cheese curds and they had some kind of seasoning to them that was different as well. They were most definitely delicious, and I was very pleased to see that they were not just the typical fried cheese curds that you find at pretty much every restaurant in Wisconsin.

Overall the meal was good.  I was kind of hoping that the husband would be more “wowed” by the burger, but maybe next time he will be. Did it live up the the amazing hype that it got? Not quite, but maybe that is just because I didn’t have a burger….and I don’t like peanut butter…   But thats not to say that it wasn’t a good meal.  It was very good, just not amazing.

Taste: A, the food was good and pretty unique for what appears to be just your standard burger bar.
Cost: A-, it gets to be a little more expensive depending on what sides you get, since everything is a la carte, but nothing too expensive.

Would I go there again? Yeah, I think so, I’m especially craving those cheese curds again now that I’ve been looking at the photo while writing this……

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Filed under: Restaurant Review Tagged: | AJ Bombers, Burger, madison, restaurant review