Off the Beaten Path

Ah, Kemah, land of the 30-acre boardwalk theme park and home to Tilman Fertitta’s Aquarium, where tourists eat seafood next to giant fish tanks filled with the distant brethren of their meals. With multiple amusement park rides, the Kemah Boardwalk is jam-packed in the summer with worn-out-looking families, likely in search of Bubba’s Windchimes — a set of beer cans dangling from a strip of wood — on sale at one of myriad shopping kiosks. Locals miss the old Kemah’s salty flavor. They prefer the smaller eateries and roadhouse bars within the shadow of the Kemah Bridge rather than Landry’s. If you want the opposite of pristine, cutesy and corporate, your first stop should be Outriggers Seafood Grill & Oyster Bar (101 Bath, 281-474-3474), smack-dab under the Kemah Bridge. The local favorite offers prime viewing of the powerboats and sailboats — often complete with silicone-assisted, thonged passengers — parading by in the Ship Channel. Outriggers is your basic fried-seafood-and-beer experience, but the place does it well, and the $4-per-pound crawfish special is really hard to beat.

For many locals, any culinary trip to Kemah begins and ends at Tookie’s (1202 Bayport Boulevard, 281-474-3444), a funky 30-year-old wooden building in Seabrook at Highway 146 just south of NASA Parkway, which has some of the tastiest, juiciest hamburgers around, at reasonable prices. Families chow down on burgers and Tookie’s signature Frisbee-size onion rings ($3.99), while a steady stream of take-out customers comes and goes.

Tookie’s signature burger is the $4.98 Champion, which arrives on a whole-wheat bun (for thrill-seekers, white buns are also available) with the usual trimmings. Wash it down with a frozen mug of Bud — it’ll set you back just $2.40. What distinguishes this particular burger is its palate-blasting marinade of wine, oil, various cheeses and onions (the onions are included in the final product). Other burgers come plastered with everything from refried beans to jalapeos to hickory-smoked bacon.

Tookie’s is the furthest thing from the slick Landry’s-style experience, and it’s all good. It features uncompromisingly hard, butt-clenching wooden benches in an all-wooden decor with masonry floors, vintage gas-station signage and even an old pump, plus a young, friendly staff.

Another popular joint, T-Bone Tom’s (707 Highway 146, 281-334-2133), features a big cooler near the cash register displaying fresh T-bone steaks ready for grilling ($16.99 or $19.99, depending on the size of beef slab, plus two sides). Here’s a tip: If it’s not beef, chicken, pork or sausage, don’t order it, because it only confuses the help. In other words, salads and other stuff on this roadhouse menu don’t get the same treatment in the kitchen as the animal flesh.

The atmosphere is basic redneck, which in theory is what you want in a steak joint. A sticker on the wall out back says, “I’d go 10,000 miles to smoke a camel,” depicting a Middle Eastern dude on a dromedary, as viewed through a rifle scope. Wander out back of T-Bone’s on the weekend, and you end up in one of Kemah’s best-kept secrets, T-Bone’s Backyard, a huge fenced-in outdoor area covered in wooden or plastic tables with rock and blues bands, where you can also eat. (Go during the week, and thou shalt endure one-man-band lounge acts.) Tip: The margaritas are made with really nasty tequila, so stick with the longnecks.

As for bars that also serve grub — but you don’t go there for the food — the two most notorious are Lance’s Turtle Club (2613 NASA Parkway, 281-326-7613) and the Seabrook Beach Club (3345 NASA Parkway, 281-326-5819), both less than two miles from the boardwalk. These two party palaces are the place to go trolling during such cultural events as the Miss Hawaiian Tropic bikini contest. The Seabrook Beach Club’s claim to fame is its swim-up bar, not to mention what occasionally goes on or off in the submerged portion of the pool.

But if you’re really looking for authenticity, you’ll venture under the Kemah Bridge to Maribelle’s biker bar (305 Bath Street, 281-474-9919). You can’t miss the crusty wooden building, with its pinkish-purple color. As the legend goes, in the ’60s its most regular patrons were sheriff’s department deputies, who would bust the hookers and johns who used to snuggle in small cabana huts on the ground floor of the two-tiered outdoor deck.

The huts are gone, but the deck remains, as does the outdoor watering hole, which features wooden swings instead of barstools on one side. The owners often cook up snacks (on a recent visit, it was taco night) to give away while the patrons drink. And when we say some of these folks imbibe, we mean they toss ’em back hard — to wash away a relationship gone bad, another almost-but-not-quite season from the Astros or perhaps the rise of FertittaWorld.