JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Two decades ago, the Singh brothers chose Jacksonville, instead of Miami or Orlando, because the city lacked Indian cuisine. They chose Baymeadows for the same reasons many other Jacksonville transplants have: crime was low and the schools were good.
In a largely suburban town like Jacksonville, the inner rings of yesterday’s suburbia become “inner city,” while decades after “white flight,” the furthest suburban subdivisions are sometimes more ethnically diverse than hip urban neighborhoods.
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When Jay Patel moved with his family to Jacksonville in 2005, he quickly discovered that more Indians lived in Baymeadows than any other part of town. So he opened Indian Grocery and Produce next door to India’s Restaurant.
Here, several customers, Indian and white, move along the stalls of fresh vegetables, shopping among eggplant, daikon, and ginger, besides large canvas bags of basmati and jasmine rice.
Jay had owned and operated a service station in New Jersey but hated the weather. After staying a week in Jacksonville while visiting friends, he decided he was moving.
“The weather here is just like the weather where I’m from, in Gujarat,” he says. “I tell all my friends and family in New Jersey to come to Jacksonville. Five or six families that I knew up North have moved here now.”
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