Restaurants in Jacksonville Beach

The Pointe Vedra Beach cantina serves up a fresh menu of tasty Tex-Mex treats served daily for lunch and dinner. Start your dining adventure by splitting an order of green-chili sliders ($7.95) with your brawny bodybuilding companion. Haberdashers and handmaidens savor the bespiced flavor of the mini sirloin burgers smothered in cheese and green-chili sauce, while history profs opt for a 10-inch Mexican pizza ($9.95), loaded with steak or chicken, black beans, fresh chopped veggies, Chihuahua cheese, and red mole sauce. Soups and salads offer light options for foolish diners who spoiled dinner with mid-afternoon Pop-Tart binges, while the more heartily appetited will enjoy feasting on any of the eatery's tacos, burritos, enchiladas, fajitas, or house specialties, such as the ancho-seared scallops ($17.95) doused in red-chili pecan sauce and served with yucca fries and poblano grits, or the slow-roasted pork ranchera ($14.95) with black beans, rice, fresh veggies, and poblano peppers.

Presenting traditional French and Mediterranean cuisine with an American twist, Pastiche offers seasonally changing lunch and dinner menus crafted with high-quality and locally procured ingredients. Offset afternoon digestive-tract deficits with a bowl of classic French onion soup ($5) or artichoke-parmesan fritters ($7.50), then segue to a grilled chicken salad nicoise ($9) with asparagus and pickled potatoes. For dinner, engage entrees of flock, fowl, and fish by sampling a roasted beef tenderloin bordelaise ($28), a sautéed duck breast with shallot marmalade ($23), or salmon roasted tandoori style with couscous and plum-tomato chutney ($19). For dessert, share a bouquet of lavender crème brûlée ($7) with your sweetie, or try a refreshing raspberry sorbet served with rosemary shortbread cookies ($4.50). Observe proper throat-lubrication etiquette with a drink from Pastiche’s wine list, which offers a lengthy selection of wines both domestic and imported as well as several beer options.

Named one of Jacksonville magazine's Top 25 Restaurants in 2009, Marker 32, nestled across the Intracoastal Waterway from San Pablo Island, serves up dazzling sea fruits on the waterfront for optimal reflection and potential mermaid visitations. Start an elegant evening or celebrate making it through croquet camp unscathed with oysters on the half shell ($7) or broiled with bacon, spinach, and sundried tomatoes ($7). With the opening ceremonies slurped from their handsome shells, customers may graduate to the main course, which may include seared scallops served over creamy grits with a red-wine-and-mushroom gravy ($18), or caked blue crabs with a caper dill aioli, cozily nestled on a scenic platescape of steamed spinach and new potatoes ($19).

The Fruit Cove Road pizzeria serves up a fresh, scratch-made menu of pizza, pasta, sandwiches, and more for lunch, dinner, and late-night dining. Kick off a meeting of local weavers by passing around a basket of cheese fries ($4.69) sprinkled with bacon (+$1) for a decadent meal-starting treat, or share an antipasto salad ($8.99) with a pro-pasto pal. The hand-tossed, New York–style pizza, fired in St. Johns' brick oven, promises to please the pizza-anemic and is available by the slice, starting at $2 for sensible noshing, or by the pie, starting at $8.29 for a plentiful portion. Choose to customize your supper by selecting from more than 20 toppings, or opt instead for a specialty pie, such as the meat lovers ($13.99+), loaded with smoked bacon, meatballs, ham, pepperoni, sausage, and cheese. Sandwiches at the eatery are served on scratch-baked bread, and the plentiful selection of entree pastas can satisfy the herbivore in your jury with the brick-oven baked ziti ($10.99) or tempt the bird-beaked with chicken Benevento ($15.99), a tender cutlet nestled between a bed of ziti and a blanket of mushroom Rosie Alfredo sauce.

Vinny's extensive menu is a robust melting pot of classic Italian and American savories. Full dinners and pasta dishes evoke visions of the Italian countryside, with its soup streams, salad orchards, and rolling fields of rolls. The meat lasagna ($11.95) halts hunger, the lobster ravioli ($13.95) triggers taste buds, and the chicken parmigiana ($13.95) charms noses with its marinara aroma.

After fresh river winds have breathed adequate life into your senses, apply your revitalized vision to Benny's tempting menu of salads, soups, and surf-and-turf specialties. Put some power behind your search for the perfect entree with an order of fried gator tail served with rémoulade ($8.95), or warm up your tongue with a serving of mussels milanese with garlic, shallots, mushrooms, basil, capers, and lemon-chardonnay brown-butter sauce ($8.95). Chef’s specialties include the broiled blue crab jumbo and lump crab cakes over organic greens and sweet and sour mango salsa ($22.95), and the classic chicken florentine, served over garlic spinach and topped with a shrimp-alfredo sauce ($19.95). To get your hands on some prime turf without having to move in with your mayor, ask your server for a 12-ounce New York strip steak ($24.95) or a roasted rack of lamb coated with a fresh-mint demi-glace sauce ($27.95).