The French Pantry

Hello again, blogosphere!

So today's post will be about my fantastic lunch at The French Pantry. I'd say it's one of Jacksonville's best kept secrets. For those of you who don't know me in real life, I live in Jacksonville, Florida so the majority of my posts will revolve around local eateries. Luckily, there's an abundance of them around town.

This wasn't my first visit to The French Pantry, but I did bring along two of my friends who had never been before and they really enjoyed the food, as expected. We arrived around 12:30 and on a typical day, the line would be out the door and maybe into the parking lot by that time. However, it was raining this afternoon so I suppose that kept some people away thinking they'd have to wait in the annoying Florida afternoon shower. They have a great selection of sandwiches, salads, and bruschettas that all come in pretty big portions. Well worth the money. The best part of the restaurant would have to be their breads and desserts. I'd say it's a crime to go there and not order a dessert. At least take one to go. Your taste buds will thank you.

The restaurant/dining room itself is really small and cozy. You might find yourself sitting with random people, but that can be a fun thing if you can strike up a good conversation with strangers while you all enjoy a delicious lunch.

I ordered a Bang Bang Po Boy. It's basically a bang bang shrimp po boy as opposed to the traditional fried shrimp. If you've never had bang bang shrimp, it's essentially a breaded, fried shrimp covered with a sweet, spicy, and slightly tangy sauce. If you ever see bang bang shrimp tacos or anything similar to that on a menu, get it. You won't be sorry. Unless you're allergic to shellfish. In that case, don't order it. Because then you would be sorry. As delicious as it is, there's no need to purposely inflict an allergic reaction on yourself for the sake of yummy food. On to the pictures:

The sandwich was huge! I had to squish it a bit in order to take a bite. In addition to the shrimp, there was some thinly sliced red onion, mixed greens, and cheese on the sandwich. The breading on the shrimp was light and crispy and the sauce was perfect. The bread is also worth noting because the bread they bake is incredible. It had a nice crust and was soft and chewy inside which was perfect for soaking up the sauce. The flavors of sandwich blended nicely together. Nothing was too overpowering but they worked together to bring out the great flavor of the shrimp just as the sandwich should. I only finished half of the sandwich (surprise!) but that only means I have a yummy dinner lined up for tonight that I don't have to slave over a hot stove for. No complaints here.

Remember how I mentioned their bread is amazing? Well another good thing about eating here is the fact that they give you complimentary bread with an olive oil, herbs, and balsamic vinegar dip that's good enough to eat as a dish on it's own. 

Again, there's a great dip to accompany their wonderful bread. I'm not sure it really needs much more explanation other than that. 

Here's a couple of pictures of my friends' food: 

I can't remember exactly what her sandwich had other than turkey. I want to guess mixed greens and red onions. I'll have to come back and update this part after I ask her what she ordered. I'll try to be more prepared next time I post my friend's food.

I believe this is a chicken, artichoke, and either goat or bleu cheese bruschetta. Again, I'll ask her and come back and update this.

And finally, the dessert. Now, I wanted to get the strawberry cheesecake when I first saw it before we ordered our food. However, we decided to hold off on ordering our desserts until the end. Unfortunately, they sold out of the strawberry cheesecake by then. So I opted for the Blueberry Cheese Tart. Still delicious, but my friends said I looked really sad when the lady told me they sold out of the strawberry cheesecake. And I was. Oh well, there's always next time. 

We ordered our desserts to go. Luckily the drive from the restaurant to my house was long enough for my dessert stomach to be okay to eat this when I got home. I decided to put it on a plate for the picture rather than snap a photo of it in the styrofoam to go box, but it probably would still look as delicious. The tart had a thin, light, and flaky pastry crust topped with blueberries, a cheesecake like layer, and then finished off with white chocolate shavings and powdered sugar. It was so good. It wasn't super sweet like some desserts can be. Again, it was a good balance of flavors and the blueberries were highlighted nicely. 

I have yet to come across anything I don't like at The French Pantry. To be quite honest, I don't think I ever will unless it features an ingredient I don't like to begin with. Like pickles. Or olives. So I guess that throws the muffuletta out the window. Though I admit, it does sound delicious, but I just don't like olives. I'm not really a picky eater, but there are just some flavors/foods that I don't like. 

Anyhow, if you live in Jacksonville or ever find yourself in the area, you have to go to The French Pantry for lunch. The only downside to the restaurant is the hours they're open. They're only open on weekdays from 11 to about 2:15. Get there early or expect to wait in line for a little bit, but it's totally worth the wait. 

Have you ever been to The French Pantry? What are some local eateries you like to go to? Leave a comment below with your answers! I love reading about other people's food adventures.

Thanks for reading!

<3 Kathy.

The Beginning: The Varsity, Highland Bakery, and Polish Food

Hello there, internet!

Welcome to the start of my food blog! For the longest time I'd been thinking about starting my own channel on YouTube, but for more than just food posts. I wanted to do vlogs, makeup tutorials, and cooking videos, but I feel like this blog is all I can handle at the moment. Maybe I'll start a channel eventually, but this works for now.

This blog will feature posts about both food from non-chain restaurants that I eat as well as food that I cook. Most of the food that I'll cook will probably be recipes I've found but every now and then I will post something I've created on my own. Though this is just the first post, I'm pretty sure the majority of my cooking posts will feature SortedFood recipes. Click on that link to look at the SortedFood YouTube page and explore it a little. They're a group of four friends in London, England who film cooking videos (Ben is a trained chef and Jamie, Barry, and Mike are normal guys learning from him) that feature twists on various recipes. They're also really funny and entertaining in general so I love watching their videos and trying out their recipes.

I'm going to try my best to include pictures with every post. Hopefully with pictures from my DSLR, but I don't always have it on me so there's bound to be a lot of cell phone pictures as well. However, the quality of the camera on my cell phone is pretty decent, so it should still be able to capture the yummy food in a good way.

Enough of the introduction portion, lets get to the first post!


So this past Thursday and Friday (August 15th/16th) I was in Atlanta for a concert. One of my friends I was travelling with and I made a pact that we would avoid any chain restaurants while travelling as much as possible and we stuck to it. Well, with the exception of a late night post-concert run to Waffle House because we couldn't find any non-chains open that late.

Our first food stop was The Varsity. It's been an Atlanta staple for over 75 years and with good reason. It's the world's largest drive-in and it's Downtown Atlanta location occupies more than two acres that can hold over 600 cars and over 800 people in the restaurant building itself. My friends and I barely explored a small fraction of the location. It has a really cool retro theme to the decor with different themed rooms. My friends and I ended up sitting in the CNN room (the CNN headquarters are in Atlanta, if you didn't know). I ordered a Glorified Bacon Cheeseburger with Onion Rings. The burger came with bacon, cheese, lettuce, and tomato on it. It wasn't until I was halfway through my food that I realized I forgot to take a picture, so here's a photo of my half eaten food, haha.

It was delicious! I kind of feel like it's hard to mess up a cheeseburger (though it has happened before), but they definitely got it right. However, I feel like the onion rings were the star of my meal. The breading on the onion rings was nice and light and it stuck to the onions well so I didn't have that annoying problem of biting into the onion ring and pulling the whole ring out of the breading. 

The next morning we decided to check out Highland Bakery for breakfast. It's such a cute little bakery/restaurant. We went to the old 4th ward location. When you first walk in through the front door they have a bunch of desserts and breads on display for you to buy and then there's the seating area for the restaurant as you walk towards the back. The walls are lined with some cool artwork and the whole atmosphere is very relaxed. I ordered the Peanut Butter French Toast. It's two huge slices of challah bread with peanut butter in the middle, battered, coated with bran flakes, and fried up like you would normally do with french toast then topped with caramelized bananas. I suppose the price ($8.99) should've been a clue as to just how big it would be, but it was so early and I got so little sleep the night before that I didn't think about it. 

I think the proximity of my camera to the food makes it seem a little smaller, but trust me, it's huge. Our waiter was super awesome and he said if I finished the whole thing he had a special prize for me to take home. He also said they didn't have to-go boxes so I had to finish it all, haha. Of course, he was kidding about the to-go boxes. I tried really hard, but only got through just over half of my food.

It was so good, but definitely a good amount of sugar. I may or may not have been a little wired the rest of the day. It also had a nice crunch thanks to the coating of bran flakes. And thankfully, it wasn't soggy like a lot of french toast can be. It had just enough give/softness to make it the right texture. The peanut butter tasted like it may have been made in house or at the very least wasn't a commercially made peanut butter. It had a slight saltyness that helped cut through the sweetness of the rest of the dish. The caramelized bananas were a good addition. They were cut fairly thick so they weren't too mushy. I'm not gonna lie, I sang The Banana Song when my plate came out. So I never found out what the special prize was for finishing the whole plate since I failed. I'm wondering if he was just saying that as motivation and there was really no physical prize, just the satisfaction of knowing I ate the whole thing, haha. If anybody reading this has been to Highland Bakery and you've finished the peanut butter french toast, did you get a prize? If so, what was it?

The last noteworthy food I had recently that I want to mention in this post was the incredible Polish food at a Polka party fundraiser for the music ministry at a local church. I'm not exactly sure what I had beyond sauerkraut and pierogies, but it was delicious. Well, I'm actually not a fan of sauerkraut, but everything else was tasty. I didn't take any pictures of the food, but I snagged this photo off of the parish Facebook page--

Starting from the sauerkraut and working counterclockwise-- there was sauerkraut (obviously, haha), some sausage that I think may have been polska kielbasa, a pierogi, some sort of meat (I'm guessing beef?) wrapped in a cabbage leaf, a swirled roll with poppy seeds on it, and I'm not really sure how to describe that last dish. I also don't know what's in the little plastic solo container because I didn't pick it up. All the food was well seasoned. I didn't feel the need to add any salt/pepper or down a glass of water because any flavors were too powerful. I really enjoyed the pierogi the most. Like I said, it was my first experience with Polish food, but it's definitely not going to be my last. If you haven't explored Polish food, I highly recommend you do.  

What are some of the yummy foods you've eaten lately? What are some dishes you think I should look for to try? Also, since I said I'd post some cooking blogs, what are some recipes you think I should try? Leave a comment below and let me know what you've been eating and what you think I should eat next.

Thanks for reading! 

<3 Kathy.