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| Photo by Ryan Morrill The owners and staff at The WooHoo enjoy the Island breeze on the restaurant's patio. |
The WooHoo, a fun, new outdoor burger joint in Beach Haven, has given the fast-food experience a special twist by serving up fresh, tasty grub made in-house. The select menu, which includes breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as ice cream and smoothies served in traditional fast-food containers, allows the restaurant to provide high-quality food quickly.
“We don’t offer chicken tenders and hot dogs that we get in frozen just to sell to people,” said Shaun Kilroy, who owns the restaurant with his wife, Megan.
The couple, who met in band class at Pinelands Regional High School, both have varied restaurant experience and said they have wanted to open an eatery in the area for a long time.
“Everything that we do, we do from scratch, and we put our own flair on and make it great,” Kilroy said. “We don’t want to get into serving a million options and having it muddled and the quality lowered.”
Three windows for order, pickup and ice cream only near a brightly colored seating area with grass umbrellas, flamingo yard decorations in colorful flower pots and ceiling fans for an added breeze, make going out to eat a seamless process, and wait times are just eight to 10 minutes, noted Kilroy. Mostly everything, including condiments and dressings, is made in the kitchen no more than a day ahead of time.
“It’s a fast environment even though everything is made from scratch,” Kilroy said, adding that they try to use every part of the food, which is sourced as locally as possible.
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| Photo by Ryan Morrill Co-owner Megan Kilroy has been making her own ice cream for many years. |
Burgers, served on a potato bun, include a choice of antibiotic- and hormone-free beef, ground turkey, or homemade veggie patty with traditional (lettuce, tomato, red onion, American cheese), summer (local greens, heirloom tomato, gorgonzola, cucumber, herbed aoli), woo hottie (sriracha, ghost pepper cheddar, jalapeños) or bruschetta (mozzarella, bruschetta) fixings.
The veggie burger, made with beans, farro, roasted garlic and caramelized onions, is “surprisingly popular,” said Matt MacCrea, head chef, who has worked as a sous chef all around Long Beach Island as well as at the former Revel casino in Atlantic City. “That’s usually people’s last choice, but ours has a very intense flavor. There’s a lot of things going on.”
The turkey burger takes more time to prepare in the morning since it is made from a whole roasted turkey. However, it “tastes much better,” MacCrea said, adding that he will not let prep work be the downfall of the kitchen. The days start early and end late, he noted.
The pulled pork sandwich, created from whole pork butts that are cooked for four to five hours and topped with sriracha BBQ sauce and coleslaw, is also a hot menu item.
“I can’t keep it in the kitchen,” said MacCrea.
Another popular item is the corn fritters; the corn is taken off the cob and served with maple butter.
“They’re savory, but with the maple butter you can turn them into your grandfather’s corn pancakes,” MacCrea said.
“We put a lot of thought into the menu. We’re not just ordering a bunch of stuff from Sysco and putting it into a fryer,” added Megan, who handles all the ice cream, which includes one “vegan” sorbet a week and eight rotating flavors of hard ice cream (blueberry has been the most popular so far), including a special cereal flavor (last week’s was Cinnamon Toast Crunch). Soft serve is also available.
Although Megan has been making her own ice cream for years, she decided to attend an ice cream-making course at Pennsylvania State University, where Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben and Jerry’s also studied, before getting into the commercial aspect.
“It was a lot of science. We weren’t just eating ice cream,” Megan said with a laugh.
The owners, who noted they are keeping their prices low, “especially compared to other places,” were honing the menu from April through June.
“You can put together a burger joint without a lot of thought process; it’s burgers. But that’s what we didn’t do,” said MacCrea. “There was a lot of time and research and development creating what we’re presenting, down to the cucumber on the summer setup to where it’s a crisp bite. … There’s a reason for each ingredient and why things are prepared the way they are.”
“We’ve had heated discussions over one small ingredient in a menu item because we want to make sure that what we give you is something that we think is awesome,” Shaun Kilroy added. “When you buy ice cream from Turkey Hill and resell it, or you buy a frozen hot dog and you just heat it up, that’s about dollars and cents. That’s about let me make more profit. Why we wanted to get into this is because we wanted to sell people good stuff. You can do that, and you can still make a profit, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about selling people something that’s awesome and giving them an awesome experience here.”
Despite the restaurant’s late-summer opening (Tuesday, July 14), the owners said the staff have been “rock stars” and have learned really fast.
The WooHoo (think Blur, “Song 2”), located at 211 Bay Ave., is serving lunch and dinner seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and ice cream until 10 p.m. Breakfast is available on weekends from 7 to 11 a.m. Restaurant hours will remain until after Labor Day, when they will change to Thursday through Sunday until Chowderfest. The owners hope to extend the season throughout the fall by taking part in several festivals.
— Kelley Anne Essinger
This article was published in The SandPaper.
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