I usually love sports bars, but this one not so much. Â They get one star just for being open on a rainy Sunday afternoon, since most of the restaurants in downtown Norfolk were closed.
Food:
I had a cheeseburger and fries. Â The fries were lukewarm, plus I had to pay an extra dollar for this side (no charge for potato salad, chips, or slaw). Â Several problems with the burger: Â cheap bun, perfectly shaped meat patty that means it was probably frozen, and cheese was almost melted off. Â The burger didn't have much flavor, so I had to cover it with BBQ sauce. Â No juicy deliciousness dripping off my burger. Â
Service:
The waitress didn't write down our order (for 2 people), so the the bacon cheeseburger came without bacon and the side of BBQ sauce wasn't there. Â The strangest part was when the she took my glass of water and didn't bring the refill for about 15-20 minutes. Â Umm...can I have my water back, please?
Beer, sports and wings!!!
Good luck with finding street parking. Meter parking ends at 6pm but that doesn't necessarily mean more will open up. Recommend parking at the MacArthur Center. It's $1 per hour before 6pm and a fixed $2 total after 6pm.
This is a chain restaurant all over the east coast...I think...but this one is located on the corner of Tazewell St and Granby St. Across the street from the Empire Little Bar Bistro.
An ok sports bar that has over a dozen flat screen tv's, a golf video game, video poker machine and an electronic trivia game you can play against other bar patrons.
Another beer that I have seen only on occasion in the west coast is Killians Irish Red, but plenty here in the east coast. It's been awhile since I had this beer, but after trying it for the first time in a long time, it was definitely a different experience. Had a weird nutty flavor, which I didn't expect. Maybe my palate was exhausted since this was my 3rd bar in just a two hour time frame, but the beer was not the Killians that I was used to.
It was still happy hour and appetizers were half off so I decided to go with their 10 piece boneless wings with the "gates of hell hot" sauce. This was beyond hot. I totally underestimated this sauce and was seriously hurting after the 3rd piece. I threw in the towel after the 5th piece. It was that hot. Why o why did I subject myself to this torture? Oh well, can't fault the restaurant, this was my ignorance for going above and beyond the limits my body can handle.
Other than that, it's an ok sports bar. Kinda reminds me of Hooters but without the hooters.
This is a pretty typical sports bar, as in good luck getting a seat if ANY type of game is on the TV. They have nightly specials throughout the week, Wing Night Monday, $5 burgers on Tuesday, $10.95 Ribs on Wednesday, 1/2 price appetizer Thursday & Sunday, Shrimp special on Friday, and Prime Rib special on Saturday. Beer here is relatively cheap and they have most of the regular domestic/import selections.
There are two levels, a dining area and a nice sized bar are on the first floor and more seating, a smaller bar, and a couple of pool tables are on the top floor. Â
I've had the wings here a couple of times, there are a few flavors to choose from (try the honey BBQ) and I've always enjoyed them. But my absolute favorite thing here is the Buffalo Chicken Wrap, it's awesome! Potato Salad is really good here as well. It's a pretty good place to stop into, have a beer and enjoy the game.
Ah A J Gators... we're just destined not to get along very well.
it's your typical sports bar with some 20 tvs covering practically every square foot of vertical surface above waist level. Â now, don't this as me hating sports bars b/c i don't. Â and all the tvs is caused me to give 2 stars instead of 1.
so this brings me to the food and service.
the first time i went (yes for some reason i feel the need to give some awful places second chances), i sat down i saw only a single server who apparently wasn't working the section i was in. Â so after about 15 minutes, i moved to different table in the section i thought the lone server was working. Â after she walked by several times without saying a word, i stopped her and asked for menu (yes, i've been in SPORTS BAR for at least 20 minutes now and have yet to get a beer). Â she gave me a some what rude and impatient reply that my server would right over. Â
another 5 minutes later, i'm finally ORDERING a beer and getting a menu. Â (yes, i should have already walked out and gone across the street to Snapper's but oh well.) Â so i finally have a beer in hand and ordered some wings.
things are suppose to get better from here right... Â i wish. Â the wings arrive floating (literally) in mild sauce and overcooked or like they'd been cooked hours before. Â they were awful and i didn't finish them. Â oh, and the second server was not much better than the first.
second time i went to AJ Gators, i walked in, sat down, and a server showed up semi promptly to take my drink order. Â i ask if i could have a menu and she stated, "oh we're not serving anything other than drinks and chips tonight." Â now this may have been b/c of the 6 inches of snow norfolk got that day but it wasn't holding back hardly any other restaurants from serving dinner. Â so i did what i should have on my first time eating here... that is i walked across the street to Snappers and had the best fish n chips EVER.
so to recap:
attempt 1 - floating chicken wings, non-existent and rude servers
attempt 2 - clueless servers, oh and no food.
advice:
if you're looking to watch a game and enjoy some beers, not a bad spot but there are far better out there... there has to be.
if you're looking for good food and can settle with just half decent service... look elsewhere.
This place is very mellow and the bartenders are nice. The reason this place only gets three stars is because the wings were horrible...they were SO overcooked. The person I was with mentioned that they seem to always overcook the wings. The beers were cheap so I'm giving it three stars.
If I'm in the neighborhood and need a cold beer I'll stop in but this is not a spot that I would specifically drive to.
Well after a rather disappointing show at the Norva (Taking Back Sunday). We walked out of the club around 9:30 looking for something to do. Luckily a buddy called and said he was at this joint and it was walking distance so we decided to stroll on over. It was a regular bar nice decorations a group of girls were doing karaoke and after a few drinks we were all having a hilarious time. I tried fried gator it was good not a very good texture though kinda like calamari but less difficult to chew
Review Source:I recently had a conference for work in Norfolk and my coworkers and I stopped by AJ Gators following the advice of some other friends. Â We rolled up with a crew of about 12 and were immediately seated.
The menu had plenty of options and was varied enough for everyone to find something they were happy with. The prices were very reasonable and the food was good. Nothing spectacular. Just good, greasy, tasty, bar food.
The drinks were really cheap too. After a tough day at our conference listening to boring speakers drone on and on all day, we were all quite  thirsty. We ended up going through more than a few pitchers and I was very startled with how cheap my check was when we finished up.
The service was very good also. The waitress had to put up with all of us being rowdy and she did an excellent job and never kept us waiting.
There were also plenty of tv's around to watch sports, a digital jukebox, and one of those photo hunt machines which we put to good use after a few drinks.
All in all, a really fun sports bar with some darn good bar food.
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