Fu Hing Seafood Restaurant

Lot's of restaurants claim authenticity and who are we to know any better? Even the most well-travelled among us haven't experienced enough of the world to be an expert on all flavors of cuisine. Even within a particular country or region the variation can range from subtle to immense such that something entirely new and unfamiliar can be the predominant style of an area close to another that you are intimately familiar with.

However, it is fair to call into question the authenticity of most fast food places with a foreign theme. Sure, the owners and workers at that Chinese restaurant you love so much are actually from China but what you are eating is actually an American born meal.

But, of course, there are the exceptions. This, my dear readers, is one of those legendary exceptions. One good look at the menu and you will have no doubt.

What you'll see before you looks like a regular "Chinese restaurant" menu. Same font, same colors, same layout, same dragons, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum. You know there should be General Tso's chicken there and some sweet and sour pork over there somewhere. Oh, and over here I think is the house special fried rice. Right? You practically don't even need to read a menu like this. But please, take another look; a very close look.

Right there, right where it's supposed to say General Tso's chicken it actually reads "Goose Intestine w. Black Bean Sauce". How odd, let's look a few lines down for the Mu Shu Pork. No, there must be some mistake in the translation here because it says "Pork Blood w. Ginger and Scallion".

Jellyfish, frogs, turtles, fish head, fish belly, intestines, livers, stomach, blood, and tongue. These are but a few of the delicacies / oddities you can find at Fu Hing Seafood Restaurant. There are some quite appetizing sounding seafood dishes which, in typical Chinese restaurant fashion, are so plentiful in variation that picking one can give even the most decisive person a stress headache. As for the standard fare, due to popular demand they've added some Westernized Chinese dishes to a special supplementary menu but good luck ordering it. They don't understand English very well nor do they know what General Tso's chicken is (what is it anyway?) so you probably won't get what you're looking for.

Who wants to order that anyway? But if you're going the whole hog (literally or figuratively), be prepared wait. The authentic food takes a while. Sometimes forever.

Being among a few less adventurous types and some genuine Chinese people, I got a taste of both worlds. For starters I munched on some beef tongue, tendon, and pig ear. The beef tongue was absolutely delicious. I'm a fan of tongue's strong, "gamey" flavor and this was well cooked. The tendon was nicely sautéed with a teriyaki-ish sauce and has a texture I actually quite like. The pig ear, on the other hand, while not bad, definitely suffered from that dirty taste typical of pig skin. Still, quite a delicious and entirely unique appetizer.

While I waited for my fish (I was told it was going to be a whole fish; eyes, tail, and everything in between), I ate a bit of the fish head soup my Chinese friends ordered. As can be expected, it tasted quite fishy. It's common to find fish mixed with sour tasting spices in Asian countries, something that doesn't quite agree with the Western palate and I can't say I really enjoyed the soup all that much because of this. Sour fish, to my mind, screams bad fish. The soup also contained another lovely surprise: a thousand year egg. Now, it's not actually a thousand years old, but a thousand year egg is… well, let's take this one directly from Wikipedia:


Century egg, also known as preserved egg, hundred-year egg, thousand-year egg, and thousand-year-old egg, is a Chinese cuisine ingredient made by preserving duck, chicken or quail eggs in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, lime, and rice hull for several weeks to several months, depending on the method of processing. After the process is completed, the yolk becomes a dark green, cream-like substance with a strong odor of sulphur and ammonia, while the white becomes a dark brown, transparent jelly with little flavor or taste.


Sounds delicious, right? Dump that thing in some sour fish soup and you have the perfect recipe for a mighty retch. The texture was very gelatinous, akin to the tendon from earlier, entirely unlike an egg ought to be.

After the soup I got some bad news. My fish wasn't coming out, something had gone wrong and it wasn't salvageable. This was almost two hours after I ordered it so, rather than wait another couple hours, I decided to clean up the chicken and broccoli my wife ordered, have another spoon full of sour fish soup, and a bite of the amazing lamb stew that was now steaming on the table. Very good stew, indeed. Despite the disappointment of not getting my food, it was still a good experience overall and I'm itching to go back again to try some more of the odd items on offer.

Just a word of caution: if you can, bring a translator. Seriously. We had one and it would have been nearly impossible without one. But if you want to try authentic Cantonese food in Jacksonville, you really only have one option.

PS. My sincerest apologies about the sub-par photographs. I left my camera at home and had to resort to using my iPhone for the pictures.

I did grab a copy of the menu while there, however, and have scanned it in for your viewing plesure:

menu outside
menu inside


Fu Hing Seafood Restaurant
10586 Old Saint Augustine Rd

Jacksonville, FL 32257
(904) 268-1953

Bad Ass Coffee (lives)

The Bad Ass Coffee on Southside became Java Cove and then became a void. Once their franchise agreement ran out, they decided to forgo the renewal costs and the alluring name that went along with them. It's quite a shame really, the coffee was still the same but clever studies consistently prove that quality is no match for brand awareness in the world of consumerism.

Bad Ass Coffee is, as far as I know, the only establishment where you can simultaneously satisfy your craving for a good cup of coffee and infantile sense of humor. I mean, who can pass up an opportunity to walk into a conversation like this:

"Hey champ, whatcha got there?"

"Some Bad Ass Coffee."

See? Awesome. Sitcom-esque hilarity and coffee, two of the finest things in life. But for those who can't appreciate such fantastic humor, then how about some coffee ice cubes? Yes, Bad Ass Coffee makes the ice cubes for their iced coffee out of coffee. Genius. Your drink doesn't get watered down as the ice melts and the caffeine content is amplified to epic proportions.

There is one remaining Bad Ass Coffee in Jax, just a couple doors down from Pho King Noodles on Beach Boulevard. Pho King, Bad Ass, I smell a beautiful marketing partnership in the making.

While it's nice to know they're still around, the distance makes it a little hard to justify a quick mid-afternoon excursion to refuel for a long evening of work. So, if anyone out there wants to open another branch, I know of a perfect location. But be it Bad Ass or Flippin' Awesome, I'll be there as long as you've got the coffee ice cubes.

Bad Ass Coffee
11925 Beach Blvd. Ste #201
Jacksonville, FL 32246
(904) 620-0000

Bistro Aix

With its kitschy name and impeccable reputation, Bistro Aix is perhaps Jacksonville's most well known restaurant. So with a couple years of wanting to test that reputation we decided to use a particularly special occasion as an opportunity to pass first hand judgment on this posh little dining establishment.

The restaurant itself has one of the most strangely comfortable atmospheres you're bound to encounter. There's an odd mixture of classy and shabby chic decor. Exposed brick walls, warm lights, cold air, uniformed staff, and (barring a few bad apples) well dressed patrons. At first it seems a little intimidating but soon you find yourself oddly at ease.

But perhaps that was just the Strawberry Mojito. Personally, I'm not a big fan of the mixed drink. While I can appreciate a well crafted beer or wine, the alcohol plays a secondary role to my intentions. A mixed drink often seems like an excuse to mask an inordinate amount of alcohol and facilitate drunkenness. But Bistro Aix's master cocktail craftsmen, like those at some of their respectable peer restaurants around town, blend a wonderfully tasty and tasteful drink, playing upon the flavor of the spirit rather than trying to mask it.

Leaning towards the leaner side of human proportions, we typically shy away from appetizers but couldn't resist the allure of the crispy duck spring rolls. Thin shell, tasty innards, nicely complementary pineapple ketchup; a mouth watering appetizer indeed. So appetizing that we gorged ourselves a bit too much on the lovely bread and butter.

For our main courses we ordered the Grilled Tuna and the Mushroom and Fontina pizza. The tuna, served over whipped potatoes with baby spinach, was amazing. Quite a rich dish but not overwhelmingly so. The pizza was good and a bit atypical.

The bill comes in a cheeky little envelope labeled "the damage". Damage indeed but you do get what you pay for and in a charming atmosphere to boot. So the reputation is well merited.

In addition to the restaurant, there's also the ONYX Bar which has some great deals for happy hour, or L'Heure du Cocktail as they call it, Monday through Friday from 4pm to 7pm.


Bistro Aix
1440 San Marco Blvd.
Jacksonville, FL 32207
904-398-1949

Kickbacks Gastro Pub

A favorite haunt of local scenesters, bloggers, and beer enthusiasts, Kickbacks is a self-described gastro-pub boasting 60 beers on tap, almost 300 bottled varieties, and an amazing array of food items.

Kickbacks has been on my radar for a while but, as always, my unrelenting cynicism led me to suspect the good press was all hype. First off, I don't particularly like bars. There's the smoke, the noise, the smelly people spilling beer on you, etc. Kickbacks eradicated concern number one because the significant amount of food-based revenue means no smoking inside. You do have the noise and the crowds but you can't really fault a place for being popular, especially when it delivers on its promises: good food and excellent beer.

There's a great selection of beers on draft so I didn't even bother with the bottle list. I'm a beer snob and I was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of good-quality, lesser known imported beers and craft brews on tap but they even have a few of the "regulars" for the less sophisticated among us. The ambiance lends itself quite nicely to sipping a pint or two. Dimly lit with beer tap handles, glasses, and empty bottles adorning the ceiling; it somehow draws a fine line between dive and distinguished.

I haven't been particularly hungry the times I've visited but didn't want to pass up an opportunity to try the food (the menu is just as extensive as the beer list) so the first time I ordered a basket of the jalapeno shrimp poppers. Good, tasty, filling. Very filling. Too filling. I could definitely see them coming in handy were I have been doing more drinking. I've also tried the southern spring rolls and those were tasty but quite decadent as well.

Kickbacks is a place I'd love to go back to regularly. Good beer, good food, just perhaps not the best place to try hold a conversation unless you like shouting at your friends.

Their web page isn't functional at the moment (The default Apache "It works!" message is the only content) but hopefully they'll get it up and running some time this year.


Kickbacks
910 King St
Jacksonville, FL 32204
(904) 388-9551