Big day of local eating for me before the ballgame yesterday. I drove up to a citrus grove in Davie and bought a bunch of fruit for the rest of the trip, plus an amazing cup of fresh-squeezed orange juice. Then out to Fort Lauderdale for conch chowder and a sandwich. The conch chowder, I should note, was awesome — reddish, peppery and more reminiscent of a very soupy chili than Manhattan clam chowder. The sandwich? Well, you’re about to find out.

The sandwich: Barbecue beef sandwich from Ernie’s BBQ and Lounge, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The construction: A huge pile of sliced smoked beef on thick-sliced bimini bread served with a side of barbecue sauce.

Important background information: When I pulled into the parking lot at Ernie’s I noticed something funny: My rental car, a Chrysler Sebring sedan, was by far the smallest vehicle there. The lot was near-full with SUVs and pickup trucks, mine was the only car-shaped car. No judgment, just saying: It could be that Ernie’s is for people that consume more than I do. And I consume a whole hell of a lot. The smaller size conch chowder was a meal in and of itself — I wound up taking more than half of it home. I didn’t even finish half the sandwich and still felt stuffed for several hours thereafter.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Meh.

First off, when I get a sandwich this thick, the first thing I do is pull off about half the meat. Don’t get me wrong, I’d always rather a sandwich purveyor err on the side of too much meat. But I’m not sure how any human being could really get his mouth around this thing, plus so much meat throws off the proportions of a good sandwich. It’s why I have no real interest in eating the Carmelo Anthony sandwich from the Carnegie Deli. That’s not an artful construction; it’s just a heavy-handed meatpile. If this makes you think less of me — especially coming so closely on the heels of news that I can’t really grow a mustache — whatever. I just don’t like biting into a giant, dry brick of sliced beef.

In this case, the meatpiling is especially egregious because the meat is undoubtedly the worst element of the sandwich. It’s not terrible — it is meat, after all — and there’s a pinkish ring around the edge that suggests it has been smoked. But there’s no identifiable smoke flavor or rub or seasoning or anything at all to give the beef taste. And it’s pretty bland on its own, just kinda chewy.

The bread, however, is excellent. Really outstanding. It’s not the heartiest loaf so it has to be cut thick to withstand the weight and grease of the beef — it and hardly does — but it is sweet, fresh and delicious.

The barbecue sauce is of the very thin variety, with chunks of onions in it. It’s tangy with vinegar and spicy with black pepper and pretty tasty overall. Only issue is you can’t pour too much of it on the beef at once without destroying the bread, so you have to either dip the sandwich in the sauce or spread on a little at a time — both messy enterprises.

After the conch chowder, the sandwich was pretty disappointing. There’s just not much more to say about it, because how much can you say about a huge pile of beef on (excellent) bread?

What it’s worth: I think the sandwich was about $8.

How it rates: Ernie’s is probably worth a trip if you’re in South Florida. It’s a nice place with an outdoor patio upstairs, and it’s apparently one of the best spots to get conch — important if you want your meals to have strong symbolic value when your civilization of schoolchildren stranded on an island goes awry. But next time I’d probably get the conch chowder and skip the sandwich. 55 out of 100.