A New Jersey restaurant put a hamburger on its menu devoted to the “Proud Boys” — main to an enormous on-line backlash and the proprietor apologizing for showing to honor the far-right group.
Aqua Blu Kitchen & Cocktails’ “Proud Boys Burger” included substances that have been listed on the menu as “white American cheese,” “layers of reality,” “cancel tradition coleslaw,” and “liberty sauce.”
After an internet firestorm of concern started when a buyer uploaded an image of the menu, proprietor Cathy Varriale tried to distance herself from her eatery’s greasy merchandise.
“I do know this may occasionally sound ridiculous, however I didn’t know what a Proud Boy was,” she advised NJ Advance Media, explaining that the concept for the burger got here from one in every of her cooks.
“I believed it was, you recognize, a proud boy.”
Varriale – who famous her eatery has beforehand featured each a Sleepy Joe and a Trump Burger – stated her telephone and inbox have been flooded with messages after the particular was marketed in a now-deleted Fb publish as “layered with boldness and liberty.”
She rapidly requested her chef if the burger represented one thing disrespectful earlier than eradicating the publish and reprinting the menus. However her efforts didn’t cease the poor reception, which she stated has been a “nightmare,” the outlet reported.
“Now that I do know what it’s, I utterly perceive,” the emotional proprietor stated.
“However how do you repair it? I don’t know learn how to repair it.”
Varriale stated her restaurant has featured themed burgers each Thursday for the final eight years, with the ill-named particular one in every of 4 listed that night time.
She had requested her employees to create two burgers this week based mostly on their household – a request that has was her disputing claims that her employees and their households are linked to the Proud Boys group.
“It was a nasty determination,” Varriale stated.
“It was stupidity. It was ignorance. However we don’t assist hatred or Nazism or any of that.”
She stated indignant callers have made threats of protests outdoors of the restaurant and others refusing to return again.
Varriale, who opened her common eatery 13 years in the past, shared a prolonged apology to Aqua Blu’s Fb Friday morning, explaining that the burger was a mistake and her bistro stands united in opposition to hate.
“We perceive the way it might have been interpreted, however it was by no means our intention nor what we stand for. We ask that you simply take this into consideration as we replicate and study from this expertise,” the publish, which shuttered the feedback part, learn.
“To those that have supported us over time, we deeply recognize each single one in every of you. Please know that we might by no means do something to jeopardize the belief and respect you’ve for Aqua Blu. We hope you perceive and settle for this as a proper apology.”
The Anti-Defamation League considers the Proud Boys as a right-wing, extremist hate group that’s misogynistic, Islamophobic, and anti-immigration.
Members — several-hundred robust — additionally espouse white supremacist and anti-Semitic ideologies, in accordance with the ADL.
The self-described “Western chauvinists” group has been energetic since a minimum of 2016, with leaders advocating for its members and followers to commit acts of violence in opposition to rivals who disagree with their excessive ideologies.
The group was famously concerned within the Charlottesville “Unite the Proper” rally the place one lady was killed when she was mowed down by a Nazi sympathizer.
The burger particular got here simply days after President Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 people convicted in reference to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, together with Proud Boys chief Enrique Tarrio.
He was freed after serving 16 months of his 22-year jail sentence – one of many longest dished out by a choose in a Jan. 6 case – for his position in orchestrating the Proud Boys’ half within the occasions of that day.