ORANGE PARK – Standing in refreshing contrast to the suburban banality of Blanding Boulevard is a yellow, red and green restaurant, serving mostly fish tacos and burgers, like one might find at Jacksonville Beach. Slogans inside the building and out – some painted on surfboards – read “Crave The Wave,” Eat Well Travel Often,” “Here may become there but never ceases to be . . .” and, most important to the joint’s rationale of exoticism and satisfaction, “Food Nirvana.”

With its combination of colorfully painted walls, beachy decorations, hanging surfboards and tiki heads, the Jimmy Hula’s at 174 Blanding Boulevard serves food and fun.

Upon entering the restaurant, a huge menu of tacos, sandwiches, “munchies” and more greets customers. Inside, various ornaments hang from bright-blue rafters and colorful vinyl bench-seats from cars stand where booths would be in other restaurants.

The restaurant’s building, once a home to pawn shops and before then a Pizza Hut, holds 90 patrons inside, 40 outside, and occupies about 5,000 square feet.

“It seems like everybody comes in here,” said Mark Lockett, general manager.

The restaurant attracts a big lunch crowd of families and businessmen in Orange Park. The atmosphere, Lockett said, attracts customers more than anything else.

“This is a different place,” he said. “There’s not really anywhere else like this in Orange Park. . . . It’s something tropical you can’t really get anywhere else.”

Indeed, Jimmy Hula’s exudes a difference from typical Orange Park fare. Its wide offering of fish tacos, its roadside cornhole games and its wacky decorations don’t remind patrons of same-old-same-old, sit-down establishments or rowdy, dirty sports-bars.

The restaurant gets its name from founder Jim “Jimmy” Hartman who, along with his son Zach Hartman, opened their first food shack – Jimmy Hula’s Original Fish Tacos, Burgers & Beer – in Winter Park, Florida in March 2011.

Lockett called the new Jimmy Hula’s “the beach away from the beach” and the new franchise has brought an exhilaratingly unique aspect to the dining of Orange Park since its opening in February.

“It’s dope!” Avery Hayes of Middleburg said of Jimmy Hula’s. In addition to the atmosphere, the wide array of craft beers draws customers, such as Pam Dorfman of Middleburg, who commented, “I love their selection of beers!”

Jimmy Hula’s, it seems, sets out to satisfy completely. The delicious meals do provide “food nirvana,” sure, but the fun-but-not-too-fun and Hawaiian atmosphere of the place demands a more comprehensive slogan, perhaps “dining nirvana.”

On Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, patrons play cornhole outside, and on Fridays and Sundays, the restaurant’s busiest days according to Lockett, various local bands play live music.

Now Orange Park residents no longer have to cross the Pacific, or even the Buckman Bridge, to get a taste of the islands.