Parson’s Restaurant (When me and my wife were visiting from Atlanta in 2002 and searching for a home in Jacksonville Beach, we were looking for a local place to have seafood. The front desk manager at the old Holiday Inn suggested Gene’s Seafood on Penman Road. We loved it…and continued ordering the same dishes from Parson’s on Ninth Street until it finally closed up shop in August 2016…only a few months after this story appeared.)
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Gene Parson’s entrance into the Jacksonville restaurant scene – a name that’s synonymous with local seafood among many longtime residents and visitors alike.
The family-owned business still carries on at Parson’s, located on Ninth Street in Jacksonville Beach – along with one lone Gene’s Seafood restaurant that still operates independently of the family on University Boulevard just south of downtown.
Parson sold the rights to the name Gene’s Seafood when he sold the original restaurant’s location on Penman Road in 1995. But his son Michael, who has worked alongside his dad in the restaurant business since he was seven-years-old, carries on the family tradition at the Jacksonville Beach location – still serving up their popular 20-piece shrimp platter, heaping piles of French fries and coleslaw and a host of other seafood entrees his dad created back in the mid-1960s.
Read more at: https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/2016/06/25/50-years-seafood-original/15715020007/