Tom Loewy, a fellow reporter and Quad-Cities food lover in the newsroom, has been talking about Luebbe's Bar and Grill for as long as I've known him. On Friday, with the summer weather rolling in and the wild storms rolling out, I wanted to venture into the rural outskirts of the Quad-Cities for lunch. I hadn't got out of the city for a meal in a minute, so it felt overdue.
As I often do, I asked around the newsroom for advice and potential lunch partners. As he often does, Loewy said yes. And he brought up Luebbe's, the Andalusia roadside diner.
I obliged, and I'm glad I did. Luebbe's Bar & Grill is located at 101 Sixth Ave W in Andalusia. Once we got there, it was everything that Loewy's mythologizing led me to believe it would be.
An affordable and simple menu, a quaint interior and a spot right off Highway 92. When we walked in, servers knew Loewy by name and backstory. There's something special about being in a place like that, but I was a fish out of water who didn't know what to order.
I knew one thing for sure. I had my heart set on a burger. The signage in the restaurant even painted it out cleanly for me: "Just get the burger," the menu read in boxed, bold font at the top.
But choosing a burger at Luebbe's is no easy task. Loewy had praise for the Hawaiian teriyaki burger and he'd heard good things about the cheese curd burger. I was torn between the kicking bourbon burger and the mac burger.
One of the many burger options at Luebbe's is the garlic burger, a simple .
