[title type="h5"]Thursday, April 3, 2015.
Lunch Grows Where Mizado Goes.[/title]
The commercial on my radio show must be working for Zea, becase the Taste Buds have asked me to give some live readings about their new concept, Mizado. It's a Mexican project that shows the Taste Buds's style well. While the cooking begins with a foundation of authenticity, it quickly enters the realm of the fanciful. By the end of the meal, you're edified by the freshness and authenticity. (I use that word guardedly, because it usually has no meaning at all).
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Tuna tiroditos at Mizado Cucina.[/caption]
Here's what goes on: distinctly Mexican ingredients and flavors are tossed about with other tastes and techniques that might flavors that feel right. They like using raw fish, for example--and not just in a ceviche kind of way. We start with a long, narrow platter of tiraditos (new word to me, too). It's raw, lightly marinated tuna with avocados, cucumbers, cilantro and jalapenos, with a sauce that reminds me both of ponzu and a citrusy salad dressing. Everything is vividly fresh and cool. Fifteen bucks at lunch, but big enough for two or more appetizers (another Taste Buds trademark) or for an entree salad.
Nancy Jeansonne is the public relations and advertising coordinator for the Buds. In another fine example of New Orleans Incest (main tenet: only 500 people live here), she used to be the producer for my radio show in the early 1990s. And when her husband asked me for advice as to how to get a job in the restaurant business, I told him to apply at Commander's Palace, because he certainly had the sharpness for the job. He did, and now he is a longtime manager in Ralph Brennan's empire.
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Shrimp and chicken tacos.[/caption]
Anyway, Nancy wanted to demonstrate what she meant by promoting Mizado's lunch menu. We have tacos--the new, unfried, gourmet kind stuffed with many crisp, pure-tasting ingredients and big hunks of protein (shrimp and chicken in this case). The tacos come out on those racks that look like jammed-together W's. Eight dollars for two, and what a bargain! she says. Certainly true if an inventory of the ingredients is made. But for a lot of people a taco means something much cheaper (in every sense of the word). So here is the other my other point to be made in re Mizado: this is not where you go to get the latest nominee for best fried taco shell stuffed with greasy orange cheese and greasier ground beef.
The problem is that this is a very hard point to make with the mainstream, whose members sometimes get offended when they don't get what they're accustomed to. Most people prefer familiar, voluminous and cheap to unique, balanced, and delicious.
I hope that someone at my funeral says that I was able to talk a lot of people into exploring the latter category. It won't be Mary Ann, who is emphatically a devotee of familiar, big, and cheap, and who says that my efforts to enlighten potential gourmets make me an elitist ahsholey.
Speaking of the Marys. . . When I leave the radio station (no need for supper after that lunch of unique, balance, delicious Mizado food), they are ending a rough day, failing in their attempt to drive to Prague. The snow, road construction, and loss of GPS past the Germany-Czech Republic border make the driving too stressful for Mary Leigh to bear. They return to Munich, which they find delightful. Especially the hotel.
[title type="h5"]Mizado Cocina. Mid-City: 5080 Pontchartrain Blvd. 504-885-5555. [/title]
