“This goes against the grain,” I said. “Coming all the way to Jacksonville and not picking up any new content for our blog.” We were in town for Christmas to meet my mother halfway between our base of operations on Saint Simons Island and her place in Apopka. We dropped Marie’s sister’s boyfriend at the airport and then made our way to Jacksonville Beach for our four year-old to play and rampage at South Beach Park and Sunshine Playground. Nearby, we’d have lunch with Mom and her husband at TacoLu, which I figured, correctly, that her husband would really enjoy. Continue reading “Lubi’s Hot Subs, Jacksonville FL”
Category: jacksonville
Beach Road Chicken Dinners, Jacksonville FL
After spending the Saturday of our trip exploring Orlando, we left Sunday morning to spend a few hours with each of Marie’s parents on Saint Simons Island. The road there takes us through Jacksonville, and I was looking forward to trying a place that we’d been thinking about sampling for quite some time. Beach Road Chicken Dinners originally opened in 1939, and we arrived just as the place started to fill up with both the after-church crowd and the Jaguars tailgating crowd. Since it’s one of the oldest existing restaurants in town, they’ve got a set, old-fashioned way of doing things. It’s not quite family-style dining, as everybody orders their own proteins, but they do offer up unlimited sides. Continue reading “Beach Road Chicken Dinners, Jacksonville FL”
Whiteway Delicatessen, Jacksonville FL
When we visited Jacksonville in December 2013, I had hoped to stop by Whiteway Delicatessen for lunch. It’s one of the city’s oldest restaurants, and said to be one of the best places in town to sample one of Jacksonville’s iconic rider sandwiches. Unfortunately, we had to come on a Saturday, when they’re closed, so we made do with a rider from the small chain The Sheik instead. It was a pleasant little oddity, but pretty far from being worth a really long drive. Continue reading “Whiteway Delicatessen, Jacksonville FL”
Callahan Barbecue, Callahan FL
Florida does not have a reputation for barbecue, that’s pretty clear. My hypothesis is that, more than any other southeastern state, it’s where people move or retire with their hometown’s recipes and try to bring those to life. So you’ll get individual restaurants with very distinct and individual flavors, but never a general sense that in this-or-that region, you can generally expect this kind of sauce or that kind of side dish. I can give you general ideas of what you may find in northwest Alabama or the South Carolina piedmont, but in Florida, it’s every restaurant for itself. Continue reading “Callahan Barbecue, Callahan FL”
Hamburger Mary’s, Jacksonville FL
Overshadowing this visit to see our friend Chris in Jacksonville was this unfortunate little incident at his house. See, we thought we had worn out the toddler in the morning. He ate well, got to visit a dinosaur, and spent an hour at a super-fort playground. Then we drove around the city’s southern beltway for the Orange Park neighborhood. He slowly started nodding off. We got to Chris’s place, climbed up the stairs and looked forward to putting him down for a nap, and— Continue reading “Hamburger Mary’s, Jacksonville FL”
TacoLu, Jacksonville Beach FL
A year back, after our last visit to Jacksonville, I was looking at Urbanspoon to make sure that the links to our most recent blog updates for that city looked okay, and somebody had recently posted some photos of the mural on the outside of TacoLu. I took one look and said we’d visit on our next trip to Florida. How could we pass this up? Continue reading “TacoLu, Jacksonville Beach FL”
Photo Post 14: The Rex in Jacksonville FL
In August of last year, we spent a day in Chattanooga and made a stop by Sir Goony’s for me to run around with the camera shooting the various mini-golf obstacles. One of these obstacles was a big orange tyrannosaur. The Goony Golf chain was a 1960s-era ripoff of Florida’s Goofy Golf. Roadside Architecture has documented all these surviving places fairly well – about a million times better than we can ever do – and while I was looking around her site for ideas for toddler-friendly things to do and see in Jacksonville, I was pleased to see that a lone Goony tyrannosaur was still standing guard at a shopping center. (You want dinosaurs in Florida? She’s got two pages of them!) Continue reading “Photo Post 14: The Rex in Jacksonville FL”
Marie, Let's Eat! 