In downtown Harrisonburg, two restaurants with similar names share the same building, advertising similar things — something about burgers and beer, and someone named Jack. When it comes to telling Billy Jack’s and Jack Brown’s apart from one another, many patrons struggle and often mix them up. Billy Jack’s is the tiny place with the specialty burgers — or wait, was that Jack Brown’s?
The confusion comes from the fact that these restaurants are indeed quite similar. They are owned by the same people, after all: Aaron Ludwig and Mike Sabin, whose fathers are Jack and Billy. Using “Jack” in both names was intentional to let customers know that the restaurants are related somehow.
I decided to check out both restaurants to set the record straight. The names are similar, yes, but the concepts are quite different. Billy Jack’s is upbeat and targeted at college students, serving bar-food with lots of space, while Jack Brown’s seems like Billy Jack’s more mature, adult sibling, with an intimate space and a more sophisticated menu.
Both restaurants have dark, wooden tavern vibes with dim lighting, exposed industrial ducts on the ceilings, and exposed brick wall accents. Both places played the song “Benny and the Jets” while I was in there. Each has a bar, each serving a rotating draught of local drinks. Each has a quirky taste in interior decorating, inviting the guests into an impromptu game of Where’s Waldo, only instead of a man in a striped shirt you are finding random objects like license plates or a chandelier made of bras, or an upside-down mannequin wearing scuba flippers.
Billy Jack’s has more seating space, offering high tops and tables along with bar seating. With a large wrap-around bar in the middle, the space is arranged like an indoor walk-up beach shack. Netted nautical details pop up in other places, but the main decorative detail is chaos. Bottles line the perimeter of the room on a lofted shelf. Shiny kegs cluster in the back corner. From a noose above the bar, a rubber chicken dangles, squawking whenever the bartender yanks its feet — a sign of an exceptional tip.
Billy Jack’s menu offers classic bar food with plentiful options if you are craving the fat-rich snack foods particularly appealing to those who are drinking alcohol, or to those who just like fried food. They have tacos, sliders, salads, and their ever-famous “Sticky Nugs,” which are fried nuggets of either cheese or chicken. Drinks come in disposable plastic cups, a subtle signal of its intended market — casual college students. You can take a large group of friends with you to Billy Jack’s.
Jack Brown’s, by contrast, is a sliver of a restaurant, offering mainly first-come-first-served bar seating with two two-seater high tops squeezed into the front corner by the window. Despite the cramped space, Jack Brown’s gives off a more sophisticated restaurant vibe, serving your drinks in real cups and offering a menu with more interesting options. The menu is smaller, mimicking its space, and offers specialty burgers and daily specials only. This is a place you take a date only, keeping your party under three or four persons maximum. Jack Brown’s does have outdoor seating options during the summer, shedding its intimate shell and reaching beyond its four corners when the weather warms up.
I ordered a burger at both places for more accurate comparison. Billy Jack’s burger was larger and heftier, offering more bang for my seven bucks. All extra toppings aside from lettuce and tomato cost a few extra dollars, so I went with the plain burger medium-rare. The taste was just what I expected in a burger, double the size. Jack Brown’s offers a variety of specialty burgers, my choice being The Greg Brady, topped with mac and cheese and BBQ potato chips. This burger was much smaller, but stuffed with the extra pizazz to make up in taste what it lost in size. Jack Brown’s burger was more artistic, the flavors and textures composed carefully by some thoughtful mind — the cheese, the crunch, the tender burger all melded perfectly together. I can get a burger like Billy Jack’s anywhere; this is not the case with Jack Brown’s.
With the more adult vibe and better food, and the possibility of outdoor seating, Jack Brown’s sneaks in front of its boisterous bar-food brother.
Other than the names and decor, these sibling restaurants are quite different. You can check them out at 80 and 92 South Main Street downtown, operating hours similar, but once again, different enough you should just see for yourself.
