“Spare-ohs”

Last week I went to see the local acupuncturist/herbalist for my recent fatigue. She diagnosed me with blood deficiency (anemia), qi stagnation (standard issue for uptight people like me) and weak wei qi (immune system). After 30 minutes of needles and a bag of ground herbs, I’m now on the mend. I should mention here – there are few things as unpleasant as decoctions. They smell bad and taste worse. My herbalist grinds the herbs so you can steep individual cups rather than boiling up 2 days worth, which takes a couple of hours and “scents” the home. You should use a sieve to remove all the grounds, but because ours is in transit, I’m sipping around them. Only three cups of this granular, brown liquid a day for 10 days….

So with renewed energy this weekend, H and I continued our quest for a decent coffee and brunch here in Jacksonville. The Cool Moose Coffee Company looked and sounded perfect – cool, old building in Riverside, hipster wait staff and excellent food served with organic coffee. Well the space and staff were great and laid back, and that’s where the positives end. I wanted to order the Reuben sandwich but was told that they only serve breakfast/brunch on Sundays. OK -- then the salmon bagel will do. H ordered a latte and the Eggs Benedict. Good lord – they should have paid us to eat his meal or allowed him to cook his own! Was there even a cook in the kitchen?

The latte was just warm coffee-scented milk served in a paper cup. Seriously people – if you can’t make proper espresso drinks, just stick to drip coffee! Note to selves: perhaps we should just order drip coffees since 99% of Jacksonville establishments can’t make proper espresso drinks….*

Anyhoo, the “Eggs Benedict” consisted of 2 poached eggs on a muffin with more-processed-than-usual ham all topped with… (wait for it)… a mound of butter??! This “sauce” didn’t come close to hollandaise – there was no tang of lemon nor was it smooth or creamy. Obviously the ingredients weren’t measured or emulsified properly, and the VERY well-buttered egg yolks coagulated from excessive heat. And the folks at Cool Moose served it this way with no hesitation. My smoked salmon bagel was fine despite the fact that it was only served with cream cheese, tomato and a smidgen of salmon – no red onion or capers.

Numerous reviews state that the Cool Moose serves a consistently good brunch; it’s even where you head if you’ve had a disastrous/disgusting attempt at brunch. If our experience is anything to go by, the “bad brunches” in this town must be downright lethal.

While walking off our meals, we met a nice chap from Sydney. His advice was to give JAX 4 years as that’s the amount of time we need to adjust to it. His tip on coffee was to buy our own espresso maker. And when it comes to restaurants – he said all but 3 or 4 were shit. So save money and eat at home. The money we save from not eating out should go towards travelling up to NY (or any other big, progressive city) about once a month, which is what he does. That way we’ll keep our edge and our sanity. And then in about 4 years, we’ll actually feel at home here and be able to laugh at it all.

Is this advice really meant to make us feel better? If it is, it ain’t working.

* The coffee problem here cannot be explained away by the fact that Jacksonville is small or southern. While in Augusta, we actually had lattes that were comparable to the ones in Melbourne.