The Alex & The Eleanor + 1

Down in Florida this weekend to attend the wedding of Julie Silver, a family friend (a lovely wedding btw) and to visit my Grandma (92 and going strong). We had a 8pm flight home on Sunday so while relaxing by the pool in my grandma’s building in Hollywood, I utilized the magic of the iPhone to look up good quick eats in Hollywood on Chowhound. The result was Le Tub, a burger shack right up the road from us that according to GQ magazine is the best burger in the country.

The entrance is really easy to miss from the road. A little doorway off of A1A, and when you step inside, it’s a well crafted dive bar with a pool table, some TV sets and lot’s of decorations (in this case toilet seats) on the wall. It seems really small until you realize there’s a large outside seating area that goes on and on and on, all with prime seating overlooking the inter coastal waterway. A stunningly beautiful view, and it definitely elevates the restaurant immensely.

We got a booth adjacent to the water. It’s old wood, weather worn, with lots of character. The condiments are housed in a cardboard corona 6 pack holder and the menu’s are photocopied onto folded sheets of paper.

We ordered some beers, fries, burgers with swiss cheese, and at Eleanor’s insistence, smoked fish salad (for some reason she was really into the idea…sounded like canned fish with mayonaise to me).

Beer and fish salad came first. Salad was pretty much canned tuna and canned whitefish mixed together with a hearty, hearty, hearty helping of mayonnaise. Tasted fine, especially when a healthy heaping of tobasco sauce helped cut the mayo some. Pretty much exactly what I expected…definitely not white fish salad from a Jewish deli, but perfectly edible.

Then it was time for the burger and fries. The fries were quite good. Cooked in peanut oil (and quite tasting of it), they were big steak fries, well cooked so they were crispy on the outside and had just the right amount of mushy on the inside. I usually don’t use ketchup with my fries, but it was a perfect fit here.

The burger was gigantic, nearly a pound, and well charred, the inside still moist and bloody. The bun was a wonder bread style, very soft, and once the burger juices started flowing it pretty much dissolved. While the meat was decent, and it was well cooked, it lacked for flavor. The burger was entirely one note…clearly this burger was made up of ground beef…and more ground beef. No salt, no pepper, no exotic secret spices, and I don’t think this beef was fatty enough for that to work. It wasn’t a bad burger by any means, but not worthy of any accolades either.

For dessert we ordered a key lime pie, which we ended up eating under cover inside the bar as the heavens opened up on us quite suddenly, and most of the outdoor diners ran for cover. Some of the more salty types seemed quite content to sit outside, drink their beers, and wait it out. The pie was a bit of a disappointment as well. Not bad, but unlike great key lime pie which is light and tangy, this was much heavier and dense, and tasting far too much of condensed milk. Also, the pie to crust ratio seemed a bit off, with the crust being abnormally thin.

So the food was a bit of a letdown, but it was still a lot of fun to sit there in the warm weather right on the water watching the boats sailing by and drinking a beer. And for that, I’ll probably return here for a meal or some drinks the next time I’m visiting my grandma, but I wouldn’t call it worthy of being a destination restaurant by any means.

C

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