Burdine’s Waterfront Bar and Grill, Marathon, Florida

After we reluctantly dragged ourselves away from the luxury of Playa Largo, Nancy and I headed on to Key West. The issue of lunch arose, as is its wont, and we discussed where to eat as I drove and listened to Death on the Nile while Nancy read a book. This isn’t the best way to do restaurant research, and we ended up picking the top-rated place on either Yelp or Trip Advisor, Burdine’s Waterfront. To Burdine’s we went.

Burdine’s is off the main road down a lane of trailers and waterfront repair and other semi-industrial places. I started getting excited. At the end of the road was Burdine’s, a sort of Tiki high up above and overlooking Boot Key Harbor.

The ground floor is devoted to a marina shop that sells beer, bait, and ammo. I didn’t go in so I don’t really know about the ammo. I was thinking of a Kevin Fowler song. They have, I suppose, what boaters will buy. As you can see, there’s a huge deck that catches the sun and a covered area that catches the breeze. There was a 25- minute wait for a table, so we sat at the bar (that crimson hat was a good sign).

Nancy and I were greeted promptly. We ordered and the food came out pretty quickly. It took just long enough for each of us to our wash hands and to admire the water view — and not nearly long enough for me to check a deluge of emails about the sudden closure of our local Starbucks back home, the one at which I’m in a morning coffee group.

Burdine’s has a focused menu. There are a variety of burgers, an interesting Italian sausage sandwich, and either shrimp or mahi mahi presented a number of different ways. And they have a full bar. Oh, and Poke. In the absence of grouper, Nancy opted for a salad topped with mahi blackened.

As you can see it was a generous piece of fish — a big old hunk of fish, in fact. Nancy was very pleased with the flavor and freshness.  I went straight to the Shrimp Burger, with visions of the outstanding Captain’s Kitchen shrimp burger dancing in my head.

The shrimp were abundant. I counted 10 large shrimp on and overflowing from a bun that could comfortably fit 4 or 5.   (I grabbed a couple before photographing it.)  The shrimp were fresh and nicely cooked with some good blackening seasoning.

We had a very pleasant lunch with the view, the breeze, and interesting chatter from the people next to us. The bill came with a final special touch: it was presented on and held down by rat trap.  Nice. Burdine’s is a good place to stop for lunch, and it would be an especially good choice for a drink and bite around sunset — and for a lively evening after. You should give it a try.

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