Diary: 4/10-11, 2014. French Quarter Festival. Bosco's.

[title type="h5"]Thursday, April 10 2014. French Quarter Festival Is Perfect.[/title] This French Quarter Festival will be one I'll remember with particular fondness. The event has always been fun for us, from an early running when Jude was in a stroller and the whole festival fit neatly into Jackson Square. Now the event is thirty years old, goes on for four days instead of the original one, extends from the Mint to the foot of Canal Street, and draws well over a half-million people. It fills not only the streets but the hotels. WWL Radio has broadcast from the Festival since its inception. I took over the hosting from Chef Buster Ambrosia in 1993. We've had hot and cold festivals, rainy ones and those covered with blue skies. But no previous iteration had weather as nice as today's. Sunny, but not too. Cool, as if it were air-conditioned. Nice crowd, spread out enough that one could get around easily. And many of the people were eager to express on the radio their happiness with the Festival, its music, and its food. The French Quarter Festival finest attrribute is in the way it attracts so many local people. I run into friends I haven't seen in a long time. This year, the obstetrician who delivered Jude stepped up to our radio table. I haven't seen him since that memorable day, but here he was, sampling crawfish and bread pudding and all the rest of the New Orleans flavors. I walked the ten blocks back to the radio station after the broadcast and wraped up a few vacation-time commercials, notably three for Maurice's Bakery. Which has decided that they want always ot offer something new and different. And to have radio commercials do the selling. [divider type=""] [title type="h5"]Friday, April 11, 2014. Bosco's. Looking Into The Immediate Future.[/title] I'm going to the French Quarter Festival for another broadcast tomorrow, so I remained home to work on the New Orleans Menu Daily's vacation editions. I plan to publish every day while we're gone, pulling together the regular departments for the next twelve issues. The website and email facilities kick out all of this automatically without my needing to do it live every day. That's essential, since long stretches during which there will be no easy connection to the web lie ahead. It's Friday in Lent, and Mary Ann continues to sample fried catfish at the churches around the North Shore. She has fun doing this until she actually eats the food. Then she complains about it so reliably that I wonder why she still thinks this is fun. Mary Leigh and The Boy were up for something more carefully cooked. We decided on Bosco's, whose many seafood dishes invited us. The chef saw me and advanced a long list of specials, the best of which was the speckled trout with capers and lemon butter. Before that, the best simple salad in the area (Tony Bosco's lemon-laced Italian vinaigrette over greens. The youthful duo were predictable: spaghetti and red sauce for ML, chicken Parmigiana for The Boy. It's the least I can do, since the two of them have spent several weekends building a fence that will allegedly keep the dogs confined while we are away. Mary Ann has them adding a system of decorator wood to the metal fence posts, something that will add nothing to the effectiveness of the fence. We would shortly regret this decision. [title type="h5"]Bosco's. Covington: 141 TerraBella Blvd. 985-612-7250. [/title] [title type="h6"] Yesterday || Tomorrow[/title]