Bombshelter Pub set to reopen

This article originally appeared in Imprint, University of Waterloo’s official student newspaper
- September 1, 2006

by Suzanne Gardner

Finally, the long summer drought has come to an end: five months and approximately $675,000 later, the Bombshelter pub will reopen for business at 11:00 a.m. on Monday, September 11.

 

A week and a half prior to the highly-awaited reopening, Federation of Students vice-president of administration and finance Renjie Butalid granted Imprint a special sneak peek at the many changes to both the layout and menu of the cherished campus pub.

 

Just as with the old Bomber, there will be both a main bar featuring 12 beer taps and a satellite bar featuring 4. With the renovations, however, the main bar has greatly grown in size and is now located along the back wall. This new bar will also feature a window to the patio so customers don’t even have to go inside to order another round.

 

The Bomber kitchen also received major renovations as Butalid claimed that “the bulk of the $675,000 went into the kitchen.” Marian Gadd, kitchen manager at Bomber, explained how the old Bomber kitchen was rather inefficient as it was originally built to serve the breakfast eatery Ground Zero, which used to occupy the space where the Student Life Centre (SLC) Tim Hortons now resides. “Previously we had to build our menus around our kitchen set-up and what it could handle,” Gadd explained.

 

Bomber has also hired a new, full-time professional line cook which will mean “more firepower and consistency,” according to Gadd. The number of kitchen staff on duty at all times will also be at least doubled from the former amount. “Our biggest key with the renovations was [to increase] the speed of service from the back of the house to the front of the house.”

 

Now armed with a better-equipped and more capable kitchen, the Bomber will also feature a new, six-page menu, tripling in size from its former two pages. The focus of the changes is on adding more entrées and introducing breakfast items and desserts. According to Gadd, however, the “new menu is conservative [compared to] where the Bomber is going.”

 

Many of the changes to the Bomber menu were inspired by suggestions from the Feds’ online survey which requested input from the students regarding what they wanted to eat at their campus pub. From the over 300 surveys that were filled out, the need for desserts was one of the most clear requests from UW students.

 

Along with traditional after-dinner options such as sundaes and dessert waffles, Bomber’s feature dessert will be the Xango ($5.75): a deep-fried cheesecake wrapped in a tortilla wrap and covered in your choice of chocolate, raspberry or caramel sauce plus whipped cream.