Diary 10|15|2017: Mizado Becomes Zea, And Other Changes.

Sunday, October 15, 2017. A few months ago the Taste Buds closed down Mizado, a Mexican restaurant on Metairie Road across from the cemeteries (about which I have a roundabout death tale, in a moment). The official word was that the restaurant wasn't productive enough. This once again shows the strange business patterns of the restaurant business. Seems to me every time I was there the place was running at capacity. I must have been at Mizado only on its good days. [caption id="attachment_42519" align="alignleft" width="480"] Mizado's main dining room.[/caption] Mizado has been replaced by another location of the Buds' flagship brand Zea. Lately I've heard more than the average number of opinions about Zea, most of them making the points that the menu doesn't change often enough (I agree). I also am told that the place is too expensive (I'd go along with that only halfway). The truth may be bundled up in this observation: although my family (which these days is usually just MA and ME) doesn't go there nearly as much as we once did. And when we do, we get the same dishes we've stuck with for years. Indeed, that might be so familiar to regular readers here that I might not have to say that our dinner at Zea tonight started with the good tomato-basil soup, moved to a house saald without the cheese (why is a mass of shredded cheese always on top of the otherwise pile of good greens?), and finished with the flavor of the month of crab cakes (always very good). MA had a salad. There's plenty of room in there for some new flavors. Why not have some of the dishes that were on the card at Mizado? That would be refreshing and include a lot of flavors we don't get even from most other Mexican places. But I am not in the consulting business. Now, I reach back to the first graf of this piece (how you like my slinging around those old bits of newspaper jargon? I was a newspaper guy in my younger journalistic days.) And I note that the rebuilding of the intersection of Canal Street, Canal Boulevard, and City Park Avenue may be the most disruptive street work in recent transit and driving history. It has people all around Mid-City, Old Metairie, and the Park neighborhood figuring out entirely new routes through the town. It forces drivers to travel on back streets so pick-marked with holes that it might make an interesting video game.