TU: Dining Notes: New downtown restaurant will serve patrons — and students

Florida Times-Union

http://jacksonville.com/food-and-dining/2016-10-28/dining-notes-new-downtown-restaurant-will-serve-patrons-and-students

Downtown has a new restaurant that is going through a rather long soft opening that will become one of the hardest tickets to get by the first of the year.

Imagine, a three-course gourmet meal at $11 per person. Oh yeah, you bet reservations will be much sought after.

The restaurant, which currently doesn’t have a name, serves as a classroom for the FSCJ Downtown Campus Culinary program. This year, the culinary program moved from the school’s north campus to the downtown location at 101 W. State St. In just a matter of months, the culinary team and construction workers were able to turn a space that formerly housed the welding department into three large kitchens and offices as well as the restaurant.

Chef Robbert Bouman gave me a tour earlier this week. I can attest for the food served by these students having eaten at the former Mallard Room restaurant when the culinary program was at the north campus.

The new restaurant is located in Building C near the fountain. When you go, park in the student lot off Laura Street.

The restaurant, which hopes to find a corporate naming sponsor, has seatings from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. for lunch ($9) Tuesdays and Thursdays and dinner seatings ($11) from 6:30 to 7:15 p.m. Thursdays. Reservations are strongly recommended for the 48-seat restaurant and can be made by calling (904) 633-8151.

The restaurant is about 90 percent completed but is serving now. Please bring cash and tipping is allowed. Gratuities are banked to pay for a class field trip at the end of the semester. The biggest cause of delay to an official grand opening is a workable point-of-sales ordering system, some art for the walls and ambient music. That will be installed early next year.

The menu changes weekly depending on the food the students are learning to prepare. This semester, the students are studying international cuisine and menus have featured foods from Italy, France, Vietnam, Japan, Germany and several other countries. During the first part of this semester, mostly staff and construction crews enjoyed the meals.

In the winter semester, they will feature American cuisine and during the summer the students learn about catering and preparing buffets.

Because this recreates the real restaurant experience, diners are seated and given menus. Customers have a choice of one of two appetizers, one of four entrees and a dessert. Beverages are limited to water and iced tea.

The restaurant classroom teaches all aspects of service. One semester, half the class works as servers in the front of the room and the other half cooks. Bouman said the first semester servers are disappointed that they are not in the kitchen, but this is valuable experience for them.

“They need to understand this front-of-the-house experience,” he said. “They need to learn that the waiter is not just trying to make life miserable for the cooks. They need to realize that customers have needs that need to be met. It takes just a couple of weeks for them to see the change in attitude.”

The FSCJ culinary program is a treasure for the city. Some young chefs who have been educated elsewhere have put themselves in thousands of dollars in debt for a job that starts out paying maybe $12 an hour. The local two-year program costs a fraction of that amount — less than the price of a good used car. The educational value is good enough to place graduates in kitchens ranging from fine dining to those who have gone on to owning their own food trucks.

This restaurant, with its ever-changing menu, will definitely be a nice option for downtown workers.