Restaurants & Bars

'Proud Boys' Burger Sparks Backlash For Toms River Restaurant

A staff member was fired over the menu addition, which the owner said was "ignorant" and "a mistake," a report said.

Aqua Blu Kitchen and Cocktails in Toms River shut down comments on its social media after its burger menu included a "Proud Boys" burger for a brief time.
Aqua Blu Kitchen and Cocktails in Toms River shut down comments on its social media after its burger menu included a "Proud Boys" burger for a brief time. (Karen Wall/Patch)

TOMS RIVER, NJ — A Toms River restaurant has fired one of its staff members in the wake of backlash from the addition of a burger that supported the Proud Boys, one of the prominent groups convicted for their part in inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

The Proud Boys Burger was added to the Aqua Blu menu on Thursday, for the weekly "burger night" specials. The menu, shared on social media, described it as having "white American cheese, onion ring layers of truth, resilience pickles, freedom fries, cancel culture coleslaw and liberty sauce."

The burger was announced days after President Donald Trump issued pardons for all of those convicted in the Jan. 6 riots, and granted clemency to Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader who was serving a federal prison sentence for his role in the riots. The Proud Boys are a right-wing extremist group with a history of violence and promoting a range of hate ideologies including antisemitism and white supremacy, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Find out what's happening in Toms Riverfor free with the latest updates from Patch.

The response was swift, with outrage spreading quickly. By Friday morning, the restaurant had issued an apology on its Facebook page, calling the burger name "a mistake."

"At Aqua Blu, we stand united against hate. We want to address and clarify that our post and burger name from yesterday was a mistake, and we sincerely apologize," the post read. "We understand how it may have been interpreted, but it was never our intention nor what we stand for. We ask that you take this into consideration as we reflect and learn from this experience."

Find out what's happening in Toms Riverfor free with the latest updates from Patch.

The post went on to thank the restaurant's customers, saying, "we deeply appreciate every single one of you. Please know that we would never do anything to jeopardize the trust and respect you have for Aqua Blu. We hope you understand and accept this as a formal apology."

Owner Cathy Varriale told NJ.com that the burger was created by one of the restaurant's staff members, to honor a staff member's husband who had just returned from deployment, and was part of the restaurant's weekly themed burger night. The staff member's husband has no connection to the Proud Boys, the report said.

"It was a bad decision. It was stupidity. It was ignorance. But we do not support hatred or Nazism or any of that," she told NJ.com, saying she did not know what the Proud Boys reference meant.

Over the weekend, the outrage spread farther and by Saturday night, the restaurant announced it had fired the staff member who created the burger description.

"We are a longstanding family-run business with deep ties to the community and want to make it very clear that we and our establishment do not support any hate groups, nor do we condone hate speech in any form," Aqua Blu wrote on its Facebook page in a follow-up post. "We take these matters extremely seriously and have taken decisive action. The individual responsible for creating and distributing the offensive menu item in our restaurant has been terminated."

Not all of the response to the burger has been negative, however. Comments on a number of public social media posts have included a number of people saying they will start patronizing the restaurant in response to the anger the burger name created.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.