B-52 restaurant
Aug. 9th, 2004 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beige_alertThere is a restaurant on Appleton Ave. in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, just northwest of what used to be a Kohl’s grocery store and which now is...some other grocery store. I live in the area and first noticed the place when it was under construction and looking a bit unusual. It’s called B-52, Home of the Big Bombers. In keeping with the aviation theme, the unusual part of the structure is a kind of mini-control tower, two stories tall with windows sloping downward like a control tower. For some reason it is nowhere near an airport, even though it seems like the natural thing to put next door to the restaurant across the street from the airport with the airplane on the roof. (Every airport has one of those, right?) Being just plane nuts, I naturally had to eat there.
One thing that did not surprise me was the menu. It had the look of a greasy, not so nutritious, non-gourmet kind of place, and it is. I had a perfectly serviceable gyro. In the usual fashion it was stuffed with a large quantity of meat plus three tomato slices and some onion. Nutritionally it is probably good that it is sold individually, without bundled deep-fried potato product or other extras. The “big bombers” mentioned on the sign are apparently burgers. They also offer ice cream-based deserts. I’d characterize it as not health food and nothing special, but basically OK. You order and pay at the counter and throw out your own trash, but if you order anything that takes any time at all to prepare they issue you a number sign to take to your table and they bring your food to you, so I suppose the service is one notch above the fast food minimum.
I don’t normally worry too much about a restaurant’s decor, unless the decor can be summed up as “scuzzy” or “gross,” but it is a theme restaurant, and I was not really impressed with how they carried out the theme. The control tower is cool, but apparently it is purely decorative---you can’t go up there and look around. Granted, all there is to look at is the strip mall next door, but it still seems like a waste to build such a thing and not have access to it. I’m sure it would appeal to the younger customers. They have some random airplanes painted on the walls, clouds painted on the ceiling, the chairs have cutouts in the backs that look like generic jet twins, plus a big B-52 mural on the back wall. Somehow, the perspective looks wrong on the B-52s. There is a sunset (or sunrise) over water, one bomber in low-level flight over it, and two more bombers plopped on the foreground at random, improbable, but jaunty angles.
That’s pretty much it. These days actual B-52 parts are available, and would have done wonders for the look. All those farm-themed places have all sorts of farm junk on the walls and even tractors outside, why not some airplane parts here? Granted, the big eight-lever throttle quadrants command steep prices, and a J57 or TF33 engine is probably asking too much, but at the very least they could have gotten some random airplane junk to decorate with. Anyone who’s been to Oshkosh knows that all manner of aircraft junk is readily available if you’re not choosy.
One thing that did not surprise me was the menu. It had the look of a greasy, not so nutritious, non-gourmet kind of place, and it is. I had a perfectly serviceable gyro. In the usual fashion it was stuffed with a large quantity of meat plus three tomato slices and some onion. Nutritionally it is probably good that it is sold individually, without bundled deep-fried potato product or other extras. The “big bombers” mentioned on the sign are apparently burgers. They also offer ice cream-based deserts. I’d characterize it as not health food and nothing special, but basically OK. You order and pay at the counter and throw out your own trash, but if you order anything that takes any time at all to prepare they issue you a number sign to take to your table and they bring your food to you, so I suppose the service is one notch above the fast food minimum.
I don’t normally worry too much about a restaurant’s decor, unless the decor can be summed up as “scuzzy” or “gross,” but it is a theme restaurant, and I was not really impressed with how they carried out the theme. The control tower is cool, but apparently it is purely decorative---you can’t go up there and look around. Granted, all there is to look at is the strip mall next door, but it still seems like a waste to build such a thing and not have access to it. I’m sure it would appeal to the younger customers. They have some random airplanes painted on the walls, clouds painted on the ceiling, the chairs have cutouts in the backs that look like generic jet twins, plus a big B-52 mural on the back wall. Somehow, the perspective looks wrong on the B-52s. There is a sunset (or sunrise) over water, one bomber in low-level flight over it, and two more bombers plopped on the foreground at random, improbable, but jaunty angles.
That’s pretty much it. These days actual B-52 parts are available, and would have done wonders for the look. All those farm-themed places have all sorts of farm junk on the walls and even tractors outside, why not some airplane parts here? Granted, the big eight-lever throttle quadrants command steep prices, and a J57 or TF33 engine is probably asking too much, but at the very least they could have gotten some random airplane junk to decorate with. Anyone who’s been to Oshkosh knows that all manner of aircraft junk is readily available if you’re not choosy.
