I’m christening a new type of cuisine: beach-mex. Don’t steal that, it’s being copyrighted. This new term was required to describe the cuisine at TacoLu, a perpetually crowded spot “across the ditch” (I’m learning native Jacksonvillian terms!) on Beach Blvd. TacoLu does not strive for Mexican cuisine purity like my beloved Bone Garden Cantina in Atlanta, but it also doesn’t offer cheese and sauce-covered tex-mex like some other “Mexican” restaurants in Jax. The $3 tacos (plus a few specialty tacos that cost a bit more) are clearly the biggest draw here.

We’ve braved the crowd and rather nightmarish parking situation (somewhat alleviated now by complementary valet) twice now. Our visits were quite spread apart because Mario so disliked his choice for our first meal, the enchilada Suizas (freshly made corn tortillas layered with pulled, roasted chicken, topped with a creamy tomatillo sauce and Monterrey Jack cheese). I liked my meal well enough to work on convincing him to go back to try it again–left to right: the Mahi taco (Blackened fish on a freshly-made corn tortilla with cabbage, fresh mango salsa and chipotle crema), the Taco Rosa (Seared Ahi Tuna with Cucumber-Avocado salsa, chipotle-ponzu sauce and wasabi-soy sauce), and a taco special which I can’t quite remember but which I think is a tuna tartare.

Taco Spread

gas·tro·pub noun [ˈgastrəˌpəb] – A pub that specializes in serving high-quality food. Kickbacks Gastropub in Riverside definitely has the “pub” part of this definition down; they boast over 600 different bottled beers and 84 beers on tap. With an impressive #1 restaurant in Jacksonville rating on Urbanspoon (and top 20 on Yelp), I was expecting a strong showing from the food too. In that area, I was disappointed.

I suppose a caveat here is that I am not much of a beer drinker, and didn’t order any on this visit. However, I have visited a number of gastropubs that do serve excellent food, so I find it difficult to give Jax a pass on giving this place a top rating. Cool hangout? Yes. Worthy of votes on websites that rank your eateries for out-of-towners? Probably not.

I was waffling on what to order from the extensive menu–which contains everything from typical bar food to pizza to chicken cordon bleu–before I found an item that combined two things I was interested in ordering. The French Mushroom Spread seemed like a nice appetizer, but I was sure I wouldn’t eat it all on my own (and Mario doesn’t like mushrooms), but behold! the Chicken Bistro Sandwich (focaccia bread filled with roasted chicken breast, mozzarella, fresh spinach and fire roasted red peppers) comes slathered in some of that very spread. I picked onion petals as my side:

Chicken Bistro Sandwich