If someone asks me to name the best restaurant in Jacksonville, I have to start with a disclaimer: I can only judge the places where I’ve actually eaten. Jacksonville has grown into a pretty impressive food city, and there are still plenty of highly regarded restaurants I haven’t tried.
That said, if I’m choosing local fine dining, Restaurant Medure is a pretty solid answer. The food is elevated, the service is polished and the atmosphere feels like a place where you go when the meal itself is part of the occasion. Its literal brother restaurant, Matthew’s, offers much the same experience closer to downtown, with an elegant dining room and the kind of menu that makes dinner feel like an event rather than just something you do because you’re hungry.
Dwight’s Bistro and Marker 32 belong in that conversation, too. Both are quieter places where the food is excellent and you can actually enjoy the people you came with without shouting over the room.
If Italian is what you’re after, Catullo’s may be the closest thing Jacksonville has to Little Italy. The problem is that everyone else seems to know that, too. They don’t take reservations, so depending on when you arrive, you may want to order a drink and settle in for a wait. A half-step below Catullo’s on my personal Italian scale is Gusto in Jacksonville Beach. Apparently, plenty of other people like it as well, because I couldn’t get a reservation for tonight. We’re going Sunday instead to celebrate our anniversary.
For something far less formal, Blue Boy Sandwich Shop may make the best sandwiches I’ve ever eaten. They’re expensive until you actually see one. A quarter of one of their sandwiches should probably be a full meal for the average person. If you eat the whole thing, you’re no longer hungry. You’re competing.
And if you finish the Monster Burger or Super Club in the restaurant, you can earn a T-shirt, get your picture on the wall and perhaps receive complimentary transportation to the nearest cardiac clinic.
Then there’s TacoLu, which I’d put on the list of places every visitor to Jacksonville should experience at least once. The wait can be long, but the tacos are inventive, varied and consistently good. Their bar also has more tequila bottles than I can remember seeing in one place. I’m not much of a tequila guy, but if all those bottles were bourbon, I might never leave.
Karai also used to be one of our favorites. We enjoyed it more before the menu changed and several of the things we liked disappeared, so we haven’t been back in a while. Maybe it deserves another chance.
And while Capital Grille and Ruth’s Chris aren’t Jacksonville originals, I don’t think being a chain automatically disqualifies a restaurant. The food, service and ambiance don’t suddenly become less impressive because you can find another location in another city.
So what’s the best restaurant in Jacksonville?
If you force me to name one, I’d probably go with Restaurant Medure.
But ask me where you should eat, and my answer changes depending on whether you want fine dining, Italian, tacos, a sandwich the size of a small household appliance or something in between.
That may actually be the better compliment to Jacksonville. There isn’t one obvious answer.
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Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt
I flew into Jacksonville in the middle of a night that had seen our plane flying into the middle of a storm and giving me a fear of flying that has never really left me. Due to delays it was 1.30am when I got there. Otto who was the Camp Director at Camp Shands asked if I was hungry. I said I was but obviously I would wait until breakfast. He told me there was no need as he could take me to a 24 hour waffle house in Jacksonville. It blew my tiny English mind, coming from a country where everything was shut by 11pm at the latest! The food was great as well, but other than a later visit to an all you can eat salad bar called Rax or something like that I never ate in Jacksonville. Sounds like I missed out!
Waffle House is reliable, but if you ever find a Huddle House, you have to go there. I have great memories of Huddle House, but they’re harder to come by unless you’re in Georgia. Rax, I think, was a roast beef place way back when. The only big salad bar place when I moved here was Sweet Tomatoes, but they shut down nationwide. It’s a pity, because that was a great place to go for soups and salads.
Rax may not have been the name, but it definitely sticks in the mind for some reason. Maybe I conflated the two having been to both. 🤔 All I do know is that for a 21 year old Brit in 1986 it was a different world!