If I haven’t mentioned it before, I was born and reared (“Chickens are raised, children are reared!” -HS English teacher) in Louisiana (I have definitely mentioned this before). Also if I haven’t mentioned it before, I regard most “New Orleans style” or “Cajun” restaurants outside Louisiana with a wary eye (I mention this every chance I get). So even giving Gumbo YaYa’s a chance was kind of a big deal for me. I was convinced after taking a look at their menu, which looked pretty legit. Not that we don’t serve up a plethora of dishes smothered in butter and cream-based sauces in Louisiana, but that is really not the majority–or the best–of what we have to offer. The hole-in-the-wall type spots serving up overstuffed po’boys and fried seafood plates–now that’s where it’s at. And luckily, the menu at Gumbo YaYa’s doesn’t just look legit, it tastes that way too. Let’s start with the gumbo:

Chicken & Sausage Gumbo

Seafood Gumbo

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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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What a slacker I’ve been! The only excuse I can offer is that I’ve been doing little eating out or even creative cooking in the interest of shedding a few pre-wedding pounds (only about a week to go!). However, I did make it out to Jax beach for a little relaxation a few weekends ago, and in order to sate an odd lobster roll craving of mine, decided to stop by A La Carte, a catering company and “gourmet shop.” The cute little building just off A1A/3rd St. looks like it was picked up from a New England coast and plunked here on the Florida coast.

A La Carte

Their “Authentic New England Style Lunch” served Friday-Tuesday features items such as fried clams, a Haddock sandwich, a “clam cake” sandwich, and the aforementioned Maine lobster roll.
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Driving around Jacksonville, you are bound to notice one ubiquitous identifier of locals: Salt Life car decals. It might be an exaggeration to say that something like 1 in 5 cars carries a Salt Life sticker–but not much of one. After a week or so, my curiosity got the best of me and I hit the internets to find out what Salt Life was all about. Turns out, it’s a surf shop + restaurant out on Jax Beach. The restaurant portion seemed to be well-loved, so I convinced a few other new-hires at the job to check it out with me one weekend.

Salt Life Food Shack

Here we find another misnomered restaurant–calling the place a food “shack” is sellint it extremely short. The modern wood and stucco exterior is made more casual by beachy-but-classy interior decor, like gorgeous wood floors and tables inlaid with ocean blue tile (don’t quote me on any of that, I’m no designer). I was excited to have dining buddies who were down with slurping oysters, and we ordered both the chargrilled and raw platters to share.

Raw Oyster Platter

Garlic Parmesan Oysters

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Every time Mario and I visit Charlotte’s NoDa neighborhood (kind of a littler Little 5 Points, Atlantans), Cabo Fish Taco has a crowd milling outside and a wait time of an hour-plus. To me, this says, “must be good.” It could also be due to the fact that the place was recently featured on Food Network’s Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives (although I really don’t think that it would qualify for any of those monikers):

Cabo Fish Taco

We waited patiently for hour hour-plus wait, alleviated slightly by the opportunity to peruse the gallery crawl held in NoDa on the 1st and 3rd Friday of every month. When we were finally seated on the patio, we quickly made our choices for dinner. Mario went for the signature beer battered shrimp tacos (cheese only, yawn) and I had the BBQ Mahi Tacos (Grilled mango BBQ Mahi-Mahi tacos stuffed with Cabo slaw, tomato, avocado, mixed cheeses & finished with cilantro white sauce):

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I’ve actually eaten at one of the newer restaurants on the Westside, Bocado, many times, but have never written a blog post on it. This is partly because ~80% of my visits consist of me ordering their delicious burger.

Bocado

Delicious Burger

On one of the most perfect days we’ve had in a while (beautiful weather and the start of college football), Mario and I visited Bocado after GT made a decisive rout of South Carolina State in our home opener. Mario couldn’t pass up the usual burger (no pickles, add bacon), but I decided to step outside the box and try a lobster roll. Now, this is important news because I was just one more bad lobster away from finally conceding that I just don’t like lobster. All my experiences with the crustacean have yielded a lukewarm, slightly rubbery, unseasoned piece of tail meat. I will partly chalk this up to the fact that I grew up eating crawfish, and lobster, I’m sorry to say, is an inferior substitute for perfectly seasoned crawfish. Bocado’s lobster roll, however, turned my assumptions on their head.
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I had almost forgotten about writing this post until I clicked through some photo albums on my computer and saw the pictures from the meal. It would have been a real travesty if I hadn’t caught it, because I enjoyed my meal at Serpas True Food so much.

Serpas is located in the Old Fourth Ward and is situated midway between Lotta Frutta and the Irwin St. Market. The head chef, Scott Serpas, hails from South Louisiana (instant check-plus for that) and worked in restaurants from Texas to The A before opening his own in 2008. Mario and I stopped by for dinner on a weekday evening. We immediately loved the wide open space of the restaurant, which has probably 15′ ceilings (don’t take my word for that, I’m terrible at estimating measurements) and is dominated by a wall of windows on one side. First off, I have to comment on our AWESOME service. Our waiter was one of the most enthusiastic I’ve ever had and clearly enjoyed the food at Serpas. He deftly fielded our questions, made recommendations, and gave insightful comments on what dishes were his favorites and why. Unfortunately, I don’t remember his name, but if all the servers at Serpas are as passionate as he is, you’re in for a nice night.

Now then, the food. We had a My Daily Thread coupon (like a Groupon) to spend, so we did our version of a “splurge” and ordered an app, entrees, AND dessert. To start, I ordered the flash fried oysters (pickled chilies, mirliton, no photo) and actually got picky eater Mario to try one!
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A few weeks ago I went out to lunch with my favorite former boss. We were both looking forward to this trip and had actually planned our outing even before I left for my internship in Dayton, because we had both heard great things about the Buford Hwy seafood spot Crawfish Shack.

Crawfish Shack

In my mind, Crawfish Shack is working to emulate the coastal eateries I grew up around in Louisiana. The interior consisted of a very simple ordering counter, picnic-style tables, and cheesy plastic seafood decor on the walls. Menu items include mixed seafood platters containing mostly fried items (as it should be) and po’boys. I’m usually VERY wary of restaurants outside of Louisiana trying to do the Cajun thing, but the good news is, Crawfish Shack does it VERY well.
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I had a few leftover tilapia filets in my freezer and was looking for a way to use them in a non-boring way (as I mentioned on my parmesean-crusted tilapia post, I typically find tilapia pretty bland). This lovely recipe from Cooked from the Heart for pastry-wrapped tilapia came to the rescue. Excuse my messy wrapping, I didn’t have as much puff pastry on hand as I thought

Pastry Wrapped Tilapia

Tilapia has grown in popularity as of late because it has virtually no fat or cals and is cheap and sustainable. Aside from some butter used to sauté onions, which could easily be replaced with olive oil, this recipe doesn’t add much to the low-fat nature of the fish (except for the puff pastry of course…). Poaching the fish keeps it moist and the simple filling is tasty and hearty.

Recipe after the jump:
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Lately, I’ve been trying to act like the grad student that I am and respect the fact that I should be living and eating on a budget. This means more cooking at home…for now anyway. In addition to being a budget-friendly meal, this is also my “meatless” Lent post for the week. These shrimp tacos were very quick and easy to put together and also crazy good:

Shrimp Tacos

I was purposely looking for a taco recipe with a mango accoutrement after my successful foray into avocado salsa, and these did not disappoint.
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