First Impressions AJ Bombers

The A.V. Club entered AJ Bombers steeled for a stupid experience by the combination of a phone conversation with a rude and obtuse manager in Milwaukee and eye roll-inducing hype from plutocrat mouthpiece The Wall Street Journal over the use of social media by that location. In some ways, leveraging Foursquare is as easy as pissing in your pants and just as socially retarded. But then something wonderful happened: The experience turned out to be really rather weird, and quite a bit of fun.

The space and service: A combination of chalkboard art, staff-penned graffiti on everything in sight, and a ceiling-mounted Rube Goldberg machine-style delivery system that delivers shelled peanuts from the bar via a small R2-D2 to tables with an explosive clatter and cries of “peaaa-nuts!” from the staff immediately sets Bomber’s apart from other area burger joints. The staff members—oblivious to Public Enemy’s revolutionary subtext that their “Bomb Squad” T-shirts suggest—are young, chipper, a little goofy, overly friendly, and infectiously perky. (These are not necessarily good things, but the combination works here.) Televisions are tuned to the Food Network and the Travel Network, but they are switched over to footage of barrel-chested athletes when a Wisconsin team is playing.

The A.V. Club’s food: There are many whimsical burger inventions to choose from. The Barrie Burger combines bacon, American cheese, and chunky peanut butter. The Turkey Burger is topped with spicy mayo and fried potato strings; it’s served on cranberry focaccia. The Milwaukee Burger won a Food Network challenge to use only Wisconsin ingredients (Nueske’s bacon, Colby, onions slow-roasted in Schlitz), and it could choke a zebra. But sometimes it’s important to check out the most basic burger, in this case the AJ Burger single, to see how it rates. That burger sports only tomatoes, American cheese, and lettuce; ours was grilled perfectly and augmented with a Big Mac-esque secret sauce. Happily the taste was worlds away from that dreck, satisfying and full of juicy flavor. The crispy, seasoned skin-on fries also best Mickey D’s. The Bombers Bloody Mary comes with a short bottle of Miller and is smooth, with medium spice. While not the best in town, it is surely alone in presenting a robust chunk of hamburger wrapped in a strip of bacon with a hunk of Muenster cheese.

The verdict: The nuttiness of the room, reasonable price points, vitality of the staff, and tasty burgers all come together to make a more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts situation that defies the prejudice against “just another burger joint.” AJ Bombers provides an idiosyncratic and enjoyable outing, and adds to the fun of downtown Madison.