Bistro Aix in Jacksonville

We went out to dinner tonight. It was “date night”. Yes, we’re seventy years old. We were in the mood for some fine dining, but we weren’t in the mood for Ruth’s Chris, and if you’ve been in Jacksonville for more than twenty seconds you know it doesn’t quite measure up to Paris or New York as a restaurant town, so our options were limited. We decided to brave a new world and blaze a new trail, so we chose Bistro Aix. It’s close, in San Marco, and highly rated and recommended. I’m really upset that we haven’t had this spot in the rotation for the past ten years. Unfortunately, we’d been a little intimidated by the menu. We didn’t feel we were ready for the full on French selections. I don’t know about MJ but I had a little trepidation going in, and I was in full on Andrew Zimmern/Tony Bourdain mode, and was looking at this as a positive new experience whether I enjoyed my meal or not. What I noticed as we walked in was the dude in his fifties sitting at the bar with a martini and hitting on this chick in her late thirties. She was out of his league, but I imagine he bought her a drink and she felt she owed him some conversation. My first thought was thank God I’m married. If I was in the dating scene trying to pick up skanks barflies single women I’d eat a bunch of cyanide and wash it down with some broken glass. We were lead through the dark trying-not-to-go-home-alone section of the restaurant and into the better lit I-can-get-a-date section. The atmosphere was great. Our waitress, who was fantastic the whole night, brought us a big fancy glass bottle of tap water. I upgraded to Heineken the next time she came by. We ordered the crispy duck confit with pineapple ketchup appetizer, which was very good but nothing to write home about. I ordered the Braised Pork Shank in harissa broth with organic parsnip-celeriac purée & broccoli rabe for my entrée and MJ ordered the Roasted Chicken with organic broccoli, whipped potatoes & natural jus for hers. Sweet…mother…of…all…that’s…holy. I ordered the pork because I didn’t want a steak. Normally, I don’t like pork in a restaurant. It tends to either be greasy or bone dry. This was falling off the bone and perfect. I forgot that it came on a bed of parsnip-celeriac purée and I thought they were really sweet potatoes - potatoes that were sweet as oppossed to yams. I thought the chef was trying to show how groovy he was. MJ was nice enough to remind me that they were parsnips and that they were probably seasoned to go with the broccoli rabe and pork. She was right. This was literally the best meal I’ve had in the United States in almost a decade. MJ made me try her chicken, which looked like a Publix rotisserie chicken. It didn’t taste like a Publix rotisserie chicken. It was other worldly good. My favorite part of the meal(s) was that the braised pork and roasted chicken were simple and well prepared. The chef demonstrating that he’s a professional, and smacking the ball down the middle of the fairway is not a problem, but with the other ingredients he showed that he was original and creative. He’s definitely way too good to be on Top Chef. I’d be excited to see him on Iron Chef, although I’d stay away from Cat Cora and Mario Batali, and try my luck with either Bobby Flay or Morimoto. We also got out of Bistro Aix for about 60% of what it would have cost us to go to Ruth’s Chris. So Bonus.