Out and About Jax - California Pizza Kitchen

Hey everyone, I hope your Summer is going smoothly.  I want to post today about CPK or what is otherwise known as California Pizza Kitchen, which I first experienced in Boca Raton about 12-13 years ago.  You know we have one now right here in Jville?  Yes, Towne Center, off course.  I love Towne Center, except for the parking.  I visited this lovely eating establishment Friday afternoon, which is something I highly recommend.  We got there about 4:30, and were able to find a parking spot rather quickly, and were seated right away, no waiting!  Friday is a good day because they are going to put their best foot forward on the busiest days, right?  And were they busy!  As soon as we were seated a line began to form and it never went away, it only got longer.  Let me tell you, an early dinner may sound lame to some of you out there, but so does, waiting 45 minutes to be seated.  That brings me to seating.  The place is small compared to the one in BR.  I swear it only had a capacity for about 200.  I am not a good judge of that kind of thing, but think I am pretty close.  If I rember correctly the one in S Florida was huge and the capacity was much more.  All the more reason to go early!  We had a pretty good waitress, but we waited about ten minutes for our wine and they brought my soup and my wine before anyone elses (my husbands).  After the wines came everything else came in a pretty timely manner.  I was accompanied by my husband and our two kids who are 3 and 6.  The kids menus are awesome!  They are like mini activity book with actual pages that you can turn, not just a one page placemat type of deal.  It kept our 6 year old happy for the entire meal, just about.  My son on the, other hand, slept through the entire experience.  The kids got cheese pizzas.  They will only eat cheese, and they were about the size of a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut, if you can recall the last time you ate one of those.  The menu for adults is pretty hefty but reasonable, nothing like Cheesecake Factory!  It took us a little while to peruse, but we did enjoy and took advantage of the tappas menu which we are not that familiar with.  It is actually little appetizers that are about half price that allows you and your husband or whoever you are with to have different appetizers and not have to share, Imagine that!  When we finally ordered I ended up getting this thing, which is also something I have never seen before, two soups in one bowl.  Have you ever heard of such a thing?  It is actually ingenius, because you can sample two kinds instead of having to make a decision.  That is my kind of thing!  So I had cream of asparagus and split pea, and the two soups just coexisted in the bowl and their edges touched but they never mixed, until the very end when there was just a little left in the bowl and I just used bread to sop it up.  Yumm!  I also orded, from the tappas menu an arugala and asparagus ( I love asparagus)  salad.  I ate it up in about 2 minutes, it was to die for.  It had this tangy sort of creamy italian dressing drizzled over spinach and arugala, with sundried tomatoes and toasted almond and shaved parmesan over all of that.  It came in a long rectangular plate and I just went from one end to the other like a corn on the cobb and scarffed that little nugget of goodness like there was no tomorrow! (deep breath)  My main course was take a guess, not pizza, but mahi fish tacos!  Yes I love fish tacos too and I don't care what kind of restaurant we are at, if they have fish tacos i am gettin me some.  And yes, they were good and messy.  My husband ordered  "the works" pizza and when it came, which was actually pretty timely, the only thing that I really didn't think I would have liked about it was the big old green bell pepper slices all over the it.  Other than that it was about the size of a typical small pizza and it looked pretty good.  I can't really say too much about it because I didn't taste it.  My husband did say it was very good and he is a pizza conasuer.  We did not order dessert because we usually choose between wine, a drink, or dessert.  My overall impression was excellent time and food, although, I knew it was going to be good because I have been there, so thank you California Pizza Kitchen for coming to Jacksonville, FL.  I am sure we wil be adding you to our favs if we haven't already (me).