I love a good restaurant week. I used to look forward to the release of Atlanta’s various restaurant week menus (Downtown, Midtown, Inman Park, Buckhead…) with excitement. The approach of Jacksonville’s Eat Up Downtown (sort of an extended restaurant week) was no exception. Last year I visited the [now closed--but soon to reopen!] Chew with coworkers. I always try to pick places whose entree choices are more creative than chicken/beef or pork/fish, and Cafe Nola, located in the Museum of Contemporary Art, fit the bill.

I’ll start at the end with this: after finishing our meal, I was SHOCKED that Cafe Nola wasn’t filled to capacity during Eat Up Downtown. The meal progressively improved (maybe just because I love dessert…) and I can’t wait to visit during their typical lunch hours or on a Thursday, when they’re open for dinner. The small but open and airy space is separated from the rest of the museum by glass walls, which still allow you to see the current main installation (always large and impressive) in the gallery.

We started our three-course meal with the grilled peach gazpacho (topped with prosciutto and fried basil) for Mario and Scotch egg (boiled egg encased in housemade chorizo, with smoked almond romesco, lemon zest) for me:

Grilled Peach Gazpacho

Scotch Egg

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I was recently invited to check out the new summer menu at 95 Cordova in St. Augustine, a restaurant featuring “New World, Middle Eastern and Asian flavors” located within the Casa Monica Hotel. Full disclosure: invited typically means free meal on this blog, in case you’re worried about any bias I may (but try not to) have. After a tour of the historic hotel (1888) turned courthouse (1962) turned hotel again (1999), we stepped into 95 Cordova to start our meal. Because I am wicked smaht and sometimes rush through things, I managed to delete all but one of my photos of the meal. Wow. Luckily Mario actually photographs his food more than I do these days, so I’ll be posting a combination of his photos and some from the handy Flickr album the event’s organizers put up.

The first course was the Kessler calamari, so named for the entrepreneur owner of the hotel group, an interesting Middle Eastern-inspired take on the typical fried calamari. It came topped with tomatoes, olives, asiago, coriander, fresh cilantro, and Moroccan aioli:

Kessler Calamari

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Jacksonville’s food truck scene is really heating up lately. Last month’s issue of Jacksonville Magazine contained a food truck feature listing 10 trucks in the Jacksonville/St. Augustine area! Mario and I visited one of the newest, The Salty Fig, for lunch last week.

The Salty Fig

The owners are dipping their toes in the restaurant waters with a food truck, with plans to open a restaurant in Riverside in the near future. All of their “Southern gastropub” fare sounded appetizing, but we finally settled on the Intuition Ale-braised pork belly sandwich (spring lettuce, tomato, homemade pickles, thick Texas toast) with side of serrano chili-honey slaw and the shrimp, andouille, and grits (goat cheese stone ground grits, creole trinity, New Orleans BBQ sauce):
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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

I’m always surprised at the lack of waterfront dining in Jacksonville. After a day at the beach, your options are mainly limited to mediocre bar food as eats go. While not on the beach (just a short ride away on a marina on the Intracoastal), Nipper’s Beach Grille provides the waterfront atmosphere along with great island-inspired food. I especially wanted to visit after discovering that the executive chef was former Top Chef contestant Kenny Gilbert. He has since moved on to South Beach, but left his influences!

Mario and I visited for dinner a few months back and enjoyed the food, and recently I was invited out for a “Flip Flop Sunday” where I was treated some new drinks and menu items. I’ll start with the latter visit since the pictures are nicer

The Flip Flop Sunday event revolved around “The Bad Habit” (with rum floater), Nippers’ signature drink:

Drink Menu

The Bad Habit

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When I can spare the time for lunch, one of my favorite downtown spots is Olio Market. They have an impressive list of creative sandwiches (my favorite food) with fresh ingredients that aren’t hard on the wallet. I’ve visited a number of times in an attempt to eat my way around the menu–I find it a good sign that there are still things I want to try.

Olio is usually only open for breakfast and lunch, but I got to try them for the first time during their special extended hours for Jacksonville’s Downtown Art Walk.

I opted for the pork Cuban (smoked pork, ham, dijonaise, swiss, house pickles, Cuban bread), and Mario decided to try the burger + cheese, bacon, and fried egg:

Cuban

Burger

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I’m feeling excited for Jacksonville. Food trucks are starting to pop up here and there despite some currently restrictive laws–something I think is a sign of a thriving metropolis. Corner Taco is one of these new trucks, and I was so impressed by my lunch there that I’m typing this with some carnitas possibly still stuck in my teeth.

Mario and I tracked down Corner Taco’s Airstream trailer today for lunch:

Corner Taco

Mario’s order was easy–1 of each type of chicken on the menu (marinated and dijon buttermilk fried). I went back and forth over my order (disappointed the shrimp tacos weren’t being offered )and finally settled on the carnitas and espresso-blackened mahi-mahi:

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We’ve spent another few weekends in Riverside, which means we found another new (very literally) restaurant to try. Pele’s Wood Fire opened its doors just before the new year, though they were known to the public previously as a catering company and Riverside Arts Market vendor. I was invited to a media dinner around that time, and proceeded to visit twice more on my own to see if they were really cookin’ with grease–or super, super hot ovens, as it were. I was also intrigued by the curiously low ratings on public review forums. I wanted to see if my media food was a fluke (possible), or if other diners’ expectations were just wildly off. Repeated negative-sounding declarations of “This is foodie pizza” (what does that even mean?) had me leaning toward the latter.

Pele's Logo

Margherita ingredients at the ready

Pele’s pizzaiolo makes certified Neapolitan pizzas, which is kind of a big deal when you consider that the certification requires special flour, bufala mozzarella, San Gennaro tomatoes from Italy, and wood fired pizzas cooked in a 1400 degree oven–which means they’re done in only 90 seconds.

My first visit for the media dinner was a fantastic 7-course feast; I practically waddled out afterward. And of course, the battery on my camera died after the second course You can, however, see some great photos and reviews on some other local blogs. We started with some wood oven-baked bread, and you could really taste the smokiness in it. The two dishes I did get shots of were the seafood platter and Limoncello wings (also fired in the ovens):
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I’m starting to think Mario and I should just pick up and move to Riverside/Avondale, since we seem to end up in one of the hip little ‘hoods every weekend. Although it’s further from my dream of a beachfront condo, apparently it’s where much of the good food in Jacksonville is hiding. One of our new favorites is ‘town, one of Jacksonville’s subscribers to the farm-to-table movement. I love the open design of the restaurant, which allows you to watch your food being prepared at the kitchen bar.

'town

Our first experience there was for brunch one unseasonably warm & sunny December morning. Mario decided to try the buttermilk pancakes (with raspberry sauce & orange-scented whipped cream), and I couldn’t pass up the lobster benedict (jumbo lobster meat, grit cakes, lemon hollandaise):
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