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A taste of the new MLG restaurant in downtown Jacksonville

MLG offers a wide variety of foods, including seafood, meat, salads and traditional southern favorites!

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Reality Television star, Marcus Lemonis has opened up a new restaurant in downtown Jacksonville called MLG.

It's located inside the historic Seminole Club at 400 N Hogan St. The menu includes a variety of seafood, meats and salads along with new American style dishes.

Jacksonville native, Roderick Smith serves as the executive chef. For the past 22 years, Smith has been serving up tasty cuisine on the First Coast. He started out with a food truck, and he got that idea from a weekend trip In South Florida.

"Seeing these guys selling CD’s out of their car that’s how they got their music out, well the light went off and I thought why can’t you do that with food?," he asked.

Smith describes the MLG restaurant as “family friendly, the food is very approachable and it’s very fresh.”

For an appetizer, Smith recommends the wild mushroom flatbread.

“We put this secret little cheese sauce on the bottom with some wilted spinach and we top it off with some wild mushrooms," he said. "It's toasted with olive oil and then we top it off also with some Fontina cheese then we garnish it with a little truffle oil and balsamic."

The menu also offers up a few twists on some classics, such as the shrimp cocktail.

"We marinate it with a little lemon oil and herbs and we fan the shrimp on the plate beautifully and then we garnish it with our signature cocktail sauce, a little lemon wedge and we also send it to your table smoking” Smith said.

If you're looking to get in touch with your southern roots, the fried chicken won’t disappoint. It’s one of Roderick’s signature family recipes.

“We marinate overnight and the next day as it soaks up all the flavor from our MLG spice we dredge it in flour and deeply fry it," he said.

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