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To understand why anyone would want to devote time to eating in Jacksonville, you’d have to wrap your head around its historical situation. Northeast Florida houses the longest continually occupied (by the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, and the English before us) part of the United States, and yet very few of the dishes offered in Jacksonville (such as datil pepper hot sauce, Minorcan chowder, and the Florida-style low-county boil) have spread to south Georgia, to the Panhandle, or to central Florida.
The Jacksonville, Florida area marks the intersection of a number of historical influences that have influenced its local cuisine: it is home to a cattle business that dates to the Spanish occupation of northeast Florida, it has been home to the shrimping industry that predates Florida statehood, and its immigrant populations (notably, Minorcan, Lebanese, French Huguenot, African, English, and Filipino) have all contributed to the region’s largely under-noticed food-culture. To be perfectly clear, this part of the United States is the birthplace of the North American cowboy, and is the first home of commercial shrimping in the United States.
In fact, little-known fishing villages such as Mayport are about the only place that a diner can find fish such as cobia, wahoo, and mackeral prepared in a restaurant, in addition to better-known regional specialties like grouper, flounder, and snapper. While Mayport is only a shadow of what it once was decades ago, due entirely to regional politics, restaurants like Singleton’s Seafood Shack and Safe Harbor Seafood exclusively serve locally caught fish––most of the fishermen and shrimpers have also owned the restaurants for decades, and many do the cooking.
Both Singleton’s and Safe Harbor are great spots for lunch, as you can order a sandwich made with one of three catches of the day for about $6 (including a side), to which I would recommend adding a few drops of the locally made Trinidadian habanero sauce. Please keep in mind that Singleton’s has been in business since the 1960s and is the more traditional choice over Safe Harbor, which has been around for perhaps one-third as long, and which is the cleaner and fancier option.
Many seaside towns in the First Coast region of Florida, from Fernandina Beach in the north to Ormond Beach in the south, share deeply felt cultural and social connections to fishing. If you were to spend some time along northeast Florida’s Atlantic coast, you would very soon after recognize that fishing and seafood-eating holds the entire Jacksonville Beaches community together, and that the place and its fishing culture are inseparable. Outside of Mayport, a restaurant such as O’Steen’s Restaurant in St. Augustine showcases the finest dish that north Florida offers, a plate of fried Mayport shrimp.
I can write with certainty that in thirty-two years of eating at O’Steen’s, I have only ever order the shrimp dinner, and that I would recommend it without a reservation in the world. Their sides (think green beans, collared greens, and apple sauce) are all just fine, and their hushpuppies are mandatory, but you wouldn’t know the first thing about Jacksonville-area seafood if you were to skip the fried shrimp dipped liberally in O’Steen’s datil-pepper-spiked dipping sauce. Also, I would very strongly recommend a bowl of O’Steen’s Minorcan clam chowder, which is a stew-thick tomato-based chowder seasoned with datil pepper hot sauce.
This year, Mayport celebrated the 450th anniversary of its founding as a fishing village, and Saint Augustine was founded in 1565: while the latter shows no signs of thinning interest, Mayport is on its last leg, and possibly won’t survive the decade. If you’ve interested in getting at something essential in American food-culture, and if you’re interested in what must be one of the oldest non-native cuisines in the Americas, you would do yourself a disservice to skip over Mayport or Saint Augustine in favor of a restaurant like the Charthouse or like Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. I’ve read LTH each day since moving to Chicago from Florida seven years ago, and I wouldn’t want a visitor to think of Jacksonville as the culinary and cultural backwater that less-informed writers would make it out to be, just as I wouldn’t want anyone to think of Chicago in those terms.
If you don’t mind, I would prefer not to make recommendations for eating in the city of Jacksonville, as I think it would be worth a visitor’s while to visit Neptune Beach for smoked fish-dip (another regional specialty) and oysters on the ocean at Sliders, to eat a Belgian pastry from Denoel Pastry Shop while strolling the Castillo de San Marcos in Saint Augustine, and to have a beer at Pete’s Bar with the Florida crackers. It’s where I grew up, and in moving away, I’ve realized that the food-culture in northeast Florida is irreplaceable––and yet it’s imminently in danger of being replaced, watered-down, and undone.
Thanks for reading,
Matt
Singleton’s Seafood Shack
4728 Ocean Street
Atlantic Beach, FL 32233
(904) 246-4442
Safe Harbor Seafood
4378 Ocean Street #3,
Atlantic Beach, FL 32233
(904) 246-4911
O’Steen’s Restaurant
205 Anastasia Boulevard,
St. Augustine, FL 32080
(904) 829-6974
[Note: closed Monday]
Sliders Oyster Bar
218 1st Street
Neptune Beach, FL 32266
(904) 246-0881
Denoel Pastry Shop
212 Charlotte St.
Saint Augustine, FL 32084
(904) 829-3974
Pete’s Bar
117 First Street
Neptune Beach, FL 32266
(904) 249-9158
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