Eat It Florida began with a phone call from Texas, believe it or not. “You need to expand,” the friend said. A few conversations later, the seed for Eat It Florida was planted. Years in the making, it is now — finally — getting its own lane to grow in.

This isn’t a new direction. Jesse has personal roots in Florida spanning decades, and he’s spent the last six years personally attending and covering Florida food and drink events — St. Augustine Food and Wine Fest, Whiskey Wine and Wildlife, and others — long before there was a formal plan to expand there. Eat It Florida is what happens when that ongoing interest finally gets a name, a schedule, and a show.

The premise is simple: the Florida no one talks about. The Florida in between the glitz of South Beach and the grind of the Disney/Universal Studios corridor. In between, you find the small towns most people drive past on the way to somewhere else — regions with their own real food culture and stories, with almost nobody talking about them consistently. Eat It Florida is built to close that gap, one town and one bite at a time.

The show runs on two ongoing strands. A 2026 Road Trip Diary follows a real multi-day journey across Central Florida, one stop per episode — the towns, the barbecue joints, the biker bars, the family-run spots that don’t show up on anyone’s “best of” list but should. The show also features Conversations — sit-downs with the restaurant owners, chefs, and food-scene locals who make Florida worth exploring, wherever that takes the show next.

Built on decades of firsthand Florida knowledge — not a drive-through outsider’s take, and not a name change chasing a trend, but the same “Food Guy” instincts that built Eat It and Like It, now pointed south.

Listen and watch: Eat It Florida is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, and YouTube.

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