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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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 thougt it fitting to write my last post before Thanksgiving on one of my last meals in Charlotte. I’m finding this bittersweet–sweet because Mario has now made a permanent move back to Atlanta, but bitter because I was actually kind of liking Charlotte and my monthly trips there. On this trip, Mario was being particularly generous in letting me pick restaurants I was interested in blogging about. After taking in a Bobcats game with friends, we decided to check out a new-ish addition to South End, The Liberty.

The Liberty

We decided to stop because of their sign outside the gastropub touting “Best Burger in Charlotte.” Aside from now-closed The Counter, we hadn’t found any much to go in Charlotte’s Best Burger category. Mario of course ordered The Liberty Pub Burger (natural beef, sweet grass cheddar, apple smoked bacon, herb aioli, hand cut fries), while I decided to order from the small plates menu and try the pork belly sliders (apple-vanilla butter, tomato jam, soy-ginger glaze, spicy slaw):
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