Food + Drink

by Devon Stiles & erin thursby More than fifty of Jacksonville’s best restaurants and beverage distributors are gearing up to face off in the 22nd Annual Jacksonville FOODFIGHT™ on Thursday, June 7, 2012, from 6:30 to 9 pm at the EverBank Field Touchdown Club. Proceeds from the event benefit Second Harvest North Florida. General admission tickets are $60 and VIP tickets are $100. For more on what Second Harvest does visit www.WeNourishHope.org. See the event entry below for more info. Olio Market downtown celebrated its one-year anniversary by announcing their Grilled Cheese with Duck Confit had secured a wild-card spot …

Stacey by Nadine Terk by Amy Moore // photos by bonnie lynn thomas Open since December of 2011, Bold Bean Coffee Roasters’ Riverside coffee shop has a cast of interesting regulars to match any of the well-worn bars that populate the district. There’s the jovial magician, the friendly techie who can get anyone onto Bold Bean’s Wi-Fi (and who considers his daily coffee a small price for that precious Internet access), the serene yogis on their way to and from the nearby studio, and various and sundry local professionals, academics, creative types, and dogs…(yes, there are canine regulars too) who …

by Deborah Hansen Seasons 52, one of the St. Johns Town Center’s newest restaurants, sets a high bar for cuisine. The menu changes quarterly and also offers weekly fresh features to take advantage of seasonal foods. Most surprising of all, however, is that nothing on the menu is more than 475 calories. Our server, Jessica, explained that this is accomplished by grilling over open fires, keeping portion sizes reasonable, using herbs and spices inventively, and caramelizing vegetables instead of using high-calorie oils and butter. She then recommended that we start with one of the restaurant’s custom flatbreads. We chose the …

photo: VICKI PALOMBO photo: VICKI PALOMBO photo: VICKI PALOMBO photo: VICKI PALOMBO photo: VICKI PALOMBO photo: VICKI PALOMBO by ANNA RABHAN Last month, The Floridian Restaurant in St. Augustine hosted a farm-to-table dinner featuring the fruits of the labor of several Northeast Florida farmers. It could not have more successfully showcased the bounty of this region and was a delicious, affordable demonstration of the benefits of a local food system. The Floridian is a somewhat small establishment on Cordova Street, likely sufficient space for normal levels of patronage, but the response for the farm-to-table dinner was so overwhelming that there …

by Deborah Hansen It’s no wonder the staff T-shirts proclaim that Carmine’s Pie House is “Neighborhood Friendly and Mother Approved.” The place was packed recently on the Tuesday Trivia night our party visited, and the food definitely got the stamp of approval from the mom who was with us. A newcomer to the Riverside area, at 2677 Forbes Street, Carmine’s has quickly gained a reputation for Chicago-style pizza along with quirky entrees like Easy Peasy Tortellini and Lobster Mac-n-Cheese. The outdoor patio was full, but we waited only a few minutes for a table to be cleared inside. The wait …

by Orin Anne Heidelberg Chinese take-out: even when it’s bad, it can still be pretty good. Those inscrutable cuts of meat and limp vegetables swimming in sugary, salty sauces are awfully comforting, as is act of eating it straight from the paper carton. According to the yellow pages, there are 150 listings for restaurants serving Chinese food in Jacksonville. Of these, most are take-out-style joints with nearly identical menus and a very similar product. Happily, notable exceptions do exist and at Mr. Chan Asian Cuisine on Beach Boulevard, the proof is in the pudding. That’s not a cliche, because Mr. …

by Orin Anne Heidelberg Picture this: It’s Friday in Jacksonville. You’re hungry. It’s late! Where do you go? What will you eat? Until recently, you’ve probably had to settle for miserable chain food, everyone’s favorite house of waffles, or a bowl of cereal. Nowadays, gourmet food trucks are the stars of the late-night dining scene in other cities; however, due to restrictive local laws and lack of community enthusiasm, they haven’t taken off here. That’s a bummer, but here’s the good news: a brash new Downtown spot called Chomp Chomp is applying the same after-hours gourmet approach of the food …

by ANNA RABHAN If you shop at local farmers markets or buy your food from a local farmer or co-op, if you prefer sustainably produced products, if you patronize locally owned businesses, or if you’ve even thought about those things, your day has come- literally. On October 24, our nation will celebrate its very first Food Day (www.foodday.org). This is a national campaign to draw attention to and celebrate healthy, affordable foods produced in a humane, sustainable ways. Some locales will celebrate only on the 24th, and some will make a weekend of it. Our beloved Northeast Florida, however, has …

by ANNA RABHAN “Farm-to-table” has been a difficult buzz phrase to ignore in the sustainable food movement lately. But between articles in national magazines that make it seem like a fantasy only the rich can afford and the plethora of related phrases, organizations and aesthetics, it has also joined the ranks of the more confusing sustainability concepts. As with many of those concepts, farm-to-table is, at its core, quite simple. It concerns connecting people, in a tangible way, to the food they eat and the origins of that food. The premise is that years of industrial farming and a global …