GastroJax

We’ve written about closing his restaurant, and assured you that your gift cards could be spent at his restaurant, . That WAS true, for a few months, but it isn’t true any more. Seems that Kenny Gilbert is pulling up stakes entirely and moving on from the First Coast to North Carolina. He opened the Fernandina restaurant in 2015. Over the holidays in St. Nicholas, a drunk driver plowed into the neighborhood watering hole . Nobody was hurt and business resumed the next day! In early December, the of Jacksonville let it be known that they had bought the old …

There are more than a few buzz-worthy restaurants to try scattered around Jacksonville. Sometimes we get caught up in staying in our own neighborhoods–I’d bet there are people in who haven’t left in years except for road-trips, vacations, and possibly their commutes. Here are three newer places you might not have been to, some of which are in less-trendy neighborhoods. Pink Salt Well-priced and delish, Pink Salt in the Lakewood neighborhood on St. Augustine Road, serves up an excellent breakfast and lots of Caribbean and Caribbean-inspired dishes, such as oxtail and Jamaican fruit cake, but they also serve a mix …

GastroFest, which takes place on Saturday, March 23 from 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. at Friendship Fountain and The Museum of Science and History (MOSH), remains committed to their goal of giving the First Coast a food-oriented festival. “People come to GastroFest because they love food,” says GastroJax Executive Director Erin Thursby. She helped found the organization which runs Jacksonville’s annual premier food festival— GastroFest—in 2014. “We’re very selective about our restaurants, food trucks, and marketplace vendors. Even if they’re selling t-shirts or candles, they need to be food or beverage oriented.” She points to Hopcloth who is back at …

Florida’s identity is wrapped up in one fruit: the orange. It’s an industry that’s changed with the times, that’s changed with scientific and agricultural advancement, and that will keep changing. For the last year, I’ve been writing Florida’s Oranges: A Colorful History. In it, I’ve given the reader snapshots of this 500 year history and the various places around the state where oranges have been cultivated. What I’ve found is that orange history is messy, interesting, and bound around unexpected things, things such as gay rights, privacy law, immigration, even voting rights and past KKK activity in the state. On …

Food trucks have changed the landscape of culinary culture here in Jacksonville in the past decade or so, and today we have a wide selection of tastes. We’ve chosen three food trucks for you to follow on social media (the best way to know where a truck will be). These three will also be at GastroJax’s annual Fall event, , on October 11th at the Jacksonville Farmers Market, and tastes will be included in the ticket price. Tickets are only $40 at this tasting event on 904tix.com. The new truck Jammas Jax brings Asian street food flavor wherever they might …

Lots of people love to eat cookie dough, even though ingesting raw eggs isn’t a good idea. Many companies have added cookie dough flavor to things such as ice cream, to give consumers what they want without the raw eggs. But one place has taken the concept just a bit further: Cookie Dough Bliss. Yep. This North Carolina chain is centered around cookie dough. Twenty different flavors, in all kinds of formats–ice cream sandwiches topped with cookie dough, in the form of a pie, in the form of cake pops, or mixed up in a milkshake with chocolate or vanilla …