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

Now nearing its 2 month anniversary, the French Fry Heaven kiosk in the Town Center serves different & delicious varieties of “Angels” (regular fries) and “Saints” (sweet potato fries). Due to a number of restricting regulations in the city, this is about as close to food trucks/street food as we’ll get in Jax for the foreseeable future:

French Fry Heaven

We visited FFH’s soft open and have been back many times since. On our first visit, we tried a flock of three cupid-sized Angels & Saints (you see what they’re doing there?), GarlicParm Angels, French Quarter Angels (Cajun spice & remoulade), and Breakfast Saints (with maple syrup):

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In my current (but soon changing) state as a financially challenged recent graduate, I was sadly unable to participate in this weekend’s inaugural Atlanta Food & Wine Festival. The preview I attended was so great I knew the festival would be too, but maybe next year. I decided the best way to mitigate my sorrows was on a patio with libation in hand. I had heard tell of a place that served what some might consider the holy grail of summer drinks, a Jack & Coke slushie: Inman Park’s newest addition Victory Sandwich Bar. So Mario and I snagged one of their tree trunk patio tables and I ordered up:

Jack & Coke Slushie

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Before I start on Restaurant Week, if you haven’t noticed, I’ve had a snazzy new icon up on my “social media bar” at the top right of this page for a few weeks. That ubiquitous “F” will take you right to First Bite’s Facebook Page. If you have noticed, then why don’t you “like” it yet?!

Now, I know I just gushed about Inman Park and their Restaurant Week 2 posts back, but now the announcement has been made for my for-real favorite Restaurant Week–Midtown!

Image via atlrestaurantweek.com

Midtown Restaurant Week will run from Sept. 4 – Sept. 12. Just like the previously mentioned restaurant week, restos participating in Midtown Restaurant Week offer 3-course $25 prix fixe menus. I’m personally pretty excited about 4th & Swift and Serpas True Food participating this year (and the latter has an overdue blog post in my queue). As an added bonus, some of the participants are also offering $15 3-course lunch menus. I won’t go through the 5-W’s this time, as the workings of a restaurant week are pretty standard, so you can check out the participating restaurants and menus here. Make those reservations soon!

Image via inmanparkrestaurantweek.com

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I don’t typically post much ATL food-related news on this blog (mostly because there are a few others who already do a great job at it) but because I love restaurant weeks and I think Inman Park is a cool ‘hood, here’s the lowdown on Inman Park’s upcoming (next month) restaurant week. Let’s do this 5-W’s style:

Who: Fritti, Pure Taqueria, The Albert, North Highland Pub, Wisteria, Parish, Park’s Edge, Rathbun’s, Sauced, Shaun’s, Sotto Sotto, Kevin Rathbun Steak
What: 3-course prix fixe menus at $15, $25, and $35 price points
When: September 20-26, 2010
Where: Inman Park!
Why: To allow you to sample some great restaurants at a great price!!

Check their website to see menus for all of the participating restaurants: www.inmanparkrestaurantweek.com

Although it hasn’t been THAT long since my last post, I feel as though I may be falling into a summer slump. Atlanta heat lends itself more to blending up smoothies and lounging than pecking away on a laptop, but I’m working to integrate the two to keep the posts flowing On my new fiancé’s (yep, I’m engaged!!) last short stint in Atlanta, we decided to check out Lunacy Black Market for lunch. I’ve been hearing good things about the place, and especially about the price, so we wound our way through downtown to find the storefront on a fairly quiet street off MLK. When we walked into the restaurant, Mario actually looked around and turned to walk out. “Is this the right place? It looks like a furniture store.” And indeed it does, with random collections of tables and chairs, couches, and bookshelves set up around the room.

Lunacy Interior

We quickly scanned the short menu and decided to order a few of the tapas-style dishes (which makes sense when you know that the chef/owner Paul Luna also runs founded Eclipse di Luna and Loca Luna). I was a little disappointed that they no longer have the slider-sized sandwiches on the menu that I’d heard about since their opening, but what we had to choose from was still a good selection. We probably could even have ordered the whole menu to sample–everything was under $4. You read that right, FOUR DOLLARS. To start, I decided to try the cabbage salad I’d read good things about on Eat it, Atlanta‘s blog:
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Chick-fil-A is pretty much my favorite fast-food restaurant, so I was excited I got the chance to get an “advance” taste of their new spicy chicken sandwich, which is being debuted for real on June 7. All you had to do for a free sandwich was visit getspicychicken.com and reserve a time for May 24-June 5. A great gimmick for Chick-fil-A, I think. But on to the sandwich:

The anticipation is killing me

The Sandwich

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I love how Atlanta has hidden pockets of awesome. I felt I had discovered a new one on my first visit to The Shed at Glenwood. The Glenwood Park neighborhood is one of those live/work areas that is full of gorgeous single-family homes, condos, and neighborhood restaurants, like The Shed. Mario and I decided to check out their $3 slider night one Wednesday.

We thought the entrance was a little awkward, as you walk in and are basically standing in the dining room–no real host’s stand separates the room. A hostess did appear promptly, found our reservation, and led us to our table. You may or may not need a reservation though; while we were there, the dining room remained full, but not crowded. Our waiter brought over an interesting starter for us to share: popcorn! We also got an amuse of parmesean-stuffed dates and an olive:

Popcorn Starter

Amuse

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I was back in Charlotte last weekend and Mario and I got a chance to meet up with some of my high school buddies that are new to the area. I’ve been debating on whether or not to do some name-dropping in this post, but I think I’m gonna go ahead and drop away One of my besties just moved to Charlotte to be with her longtime boyfriend and my old friend, recently acquired Bobcats player Tyrus Thomas. They requested a soul/Southern food spot, and after some debate, Mario and I decided to meet them at Boudreaux’s Louisiana Kitchen in NoDa. Obviously Boudreaux’s is not the name of this post, and that’s because I didn’t feel motivated to write a full post after our disappointing meal. The crawfish and spinach dip appetizer was the highlight. I had an oyster po’boy that was unseasoned and borderline gross. There was one interesting point on the menu–their selection of hurricanes. We couldn’t decide whether it was in poor taste or kind of funny/clever that they named their different hurricane concoctions after actual hurricanes. The Hurricane Katrina was made up of spirits from locations that followed the course of the hurricane. Hmm…

Anyway, toward the end of the meal, my friends asked if we had heard of Amelie’s French Bakery, also in the NoDa area. When we said no, they both insited we go right away. Tyrus, usually a pretty goofy guy, got extremely serious when he started to describe a fruit tart they serve. “Jessica. Ok they have this graham cracker crust. And then this custard that is really, really good. Then on top are these perfectly sliced strawberries and berries and stuff, gracefully arranged and topped with this apple jam….ok we have to go right now.” And so we did:

Amelie's French Bakery

I’ve been a little MIA lately because the end of the semester is always a little hectic. I have a big paper deadline looming so the blog has been neglected I’m actually scribbling this entry via the old pen and paper during a sleep-inducing class to be transcribed to the ‘net later on:

Class notes and a distraction

But I digress.

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen a few Friday morning tweets related to “girls’ breakfasts.” I’ve been working my way around some ATL breakfast spots with a few lovely ladies from my Ph.D. program. Many of the restaurants thus far are places I’ve visited before–West Egg, Highland Bakery, Sublime Doughnuts. However, last week I was excited to stop in ATL mainstay Ria’s Bluebird for the first time.

Ria’s is located on Memorial Dr. across from the Oakland Cemetery (one side of it anyway–that thing is huge). It basically looks like a 70s truck stop diner, with only ~5 tables and an eat-in counter inside. I can see why the weekend waits are supposedly out of this world. However, since the weather is warming up, my companions and I opted to eat on the enclosed patio, which we found a little dark, but enjoyable. We were all struggling to decide what to order, but when our waitress mentioned “Today’s Omelette”–pesto and brie–3/4 of us dropped all other considerations and ordered it. Our 4th, a vegan, went with the Southwest Tofu Scramble (spicy tofu cubes, sliced tomato, broccoli, black beans & red onions, topped with cilantro pesto):
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