One of my close friends recently moved to Indonesia as part of a year-long teaching program. It was hard to accept she would be halfway around the world for a year, but we knew how excited she was to see a different part of the world and gain new experiences. Before she left, a group of us held a going-away dinner at Eleven South, a fine-dining restaurant in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.

My friend who left for Indonesia often likes to try new restaurants, and this restaurant had been on her list for a while. While the parking lot was small, I managed to find parking before joining my friends at our table on the covered patio. Under string lights and the general buzz of diners chatting, we first ordered drinks from their extensive craft cocktail menu.

I opted for the Lemon Blossom, a cocktail featuring Crop Meyer Lemon vodka, St. Germain elderflower liqueur, fresh lemon, mint, simple syrup and soda water. Everyone ordered something different, and all raved about their drinks. For our main course, we all also ordered different dishes. I tucked into the goat cheese chicken Saltimbocca.

I knew I would like this dish the moment the waiter placed it in front of me. From the chicken topped with goat cheese to the whipped potatoes to the sauteed asparagus to the mushroom marsala sauce, I practically cleared my plate. One of my friends ordered the beef short rib and went quiet as she savored each bite.

I normally don’t order desserts at restaurants because I fill up on the main course, but as we celebrated our friend’s next adventure in Indonesia and wanted to extend the evening to spend as much time as possible with her, we all indulged in different desserts. Eleven South is well-known for its bread pudding, but the moment I saw carrot cake on the menu, it was a done deal. Perhaps the best carrot cake I have eaten in my life, this one put a unique twist on the classic cake, with pineapple and banana added in for a more tropical flavor. While the slice was too big for me to finish at the restaurant, I knew bringing leftovers home meant it would vanish by morning, eaten at midnight by someone else in my house … .

— Aoife O’Riordan, associate editor