Great barbecue and alligator in Jacksonville, Florida

Son!

Look here, here’s what you do when you’re golfing in Jacksonville, Florida, on the west side of town.

You stop in there at the Cross Creek Steakhouse and Barbecue, over there to Lane Avenue, past Denny’s, up there on the right.

Find yourself a booth. Sit down and order gator bites and silver-dollar, fried green tomatoes for appetizers.

Wait! First, get yourself a Bikini Martini. Dog, barbecue and martinis go together like night crawlers and mudfish.

All right, now you’re ready for Big Meat. They cook their barbecue here the old-fashioned way, dry seasoned and slow-smoked over oak wood every night. Them baby-back ribs don’t just fall off the bone, they sing a little Hank Williams on the way to your mouth.

They come with Texas toast. If you’re one of them hippies and don’t eat meat, get yourself a pile of that Mayport, jumbo fried shrimp.

If you’re there at lunch time, get yourself an Old Southern Blues burger, with barbecue sauce, bleu cheese crumbles, and some beer-battered onion rings. You can literally hear your veins welcoming all them clumps of cholesterol.

For dessert – what the hell are you thinking? – you got to go with the nutball ice cream sundae. They’re ain’t no other choice.

All right, now you can go sit in your lawn chair in the back yard and listen to the crickets and watch the dogs fight, with your belly all happy and swole up.