'Proud Boys' Burger Not 1st Political Item For Toms River Restaurant

TOMS RIVER, NJ — A Toms River restaurant that issued apologies for posting menu item named for the Proud Boys has posted other items that highlighted President Donald Trump, according to social media postings.

Screenshots circulating in a Reddit group of a November post to the Aqua Blu Kitchen and Cocktails Facebook page show the restaurant had a burger named "The Border Czar" and french fries called "Make Fries Great Again," both of which were served with magadonald's sauce.

The Nov. 24 post has been deleted from the restaurant's Facebook page, and search of the page did not turn up any other posts of politically named menu items.

"Aqua Blu isn't sorry. They've done this before. They just got caught this time," the post in the New Jersey subreddit was titled.

Messages left Tuesday morning for Aqua Blu seeking comment were not answered. The restaurant is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

The restaurant has been under fire from some since it posted a menu on Jan. 23 highlighting the "Proud Boys" burger, with "white American cheese, onion ring layers of truth, resilience pickles, freedom fries, cancel culture coleslaw and liberty sauce."

Owner Cathy Varriale issued apologies,in interview with NJ.com, and later on the Aqua Blu Facebook page, calling the menu description "ignorant" and "a mistake," and then announced the staff member who came up with the burger had been fired.

"It was a bad decision. It was stupidity. It was ignorance," she told NJ.com. "But we do not support hatred or Nazism or any of that."

Varriale had told NJ.com that the menu had previously included a Trump burger and a "Sleepy Joe" burger, but made no mention of the Border Czar or the magadonald's sauce, which was the only nicknamed item for the Border Czar burger and the Make Fries Great Again fries. (The burger was topped with cheddar cheese, bacon ranch, lettuce, tomato, red onion and the sauce, while the fries were topped with cheese, bacon, scallions, jalapenos, sour cream and the sauce.)

The backlash over the Proud Boys burger from some areas has been intense. Commenting on Aqua Blu's social media posts has been turned off and Yelp has halted the posting of reviews for the restaurant due to "unusual activity."

At the same time, there has been lots of local support for the restaurant and the Proud Boys burger, which was introduced 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.

Trump is very popular in Ocean County; he received more than 227,000 votes out of 481,000 registered voters in Ocean County — 67 percent of the vote — in the November 2024 election.

One local page, Jersey Coast Emergency News, had dozens of comments on a post about the menu backlash, offering its own take on a burger special. Multiple posters in the comments said they would be heading to the restaurant to support it. Posters commenting on Patch have expressed similar sentiments.

Previous reporting: 'Proud Boys' Burger Sparks Backlash For Toms River Restaurant