[title type="h5"]Thursday, May 15, 2014.
Queedle-Deep! First Taste: Mizado[/title]
I guess I should be thankful for the air-conditioned weather all spring. If we always had temps in the high seventies by day and the low sixties by night, property values in New Orleans would skyrocket.
On the other hand, I find the late arrival of everything this year unsettling. Soft-shell crabs and crawfish are weeks or even months behind their usual schedules. The big cactuses outside my door usually are in showy yellow blooms on Mother's Day. This year: nothing.
But the season marker I miss most is the bird I call the "queedle-deep." Its song is a question followed by an answer. "Queedle DEEP?" he asks (the singers are all male). After a few seconds' pause, he answers, his tones dropping: "queedle dee-doop." The questioning is loudest and most beautiful in the early morning, but I hear it throughout the day for about two months.
But not this year. As of last night, I hadn't heard it at all. But as I wrote my daily Daily, the sound caught my ear. One bird's voice, in the big patch of woods about fifty yards away. In the coming days, we'd hear more birds, closer to our house, and ultimately when we rise, with the prettiest little bird song I know. Queedle-deep."
I have never seen this bird, but not for a lack of trying. At last, I think I know its identity: the wood thrush. A few radio listeners hear me talking about this today, and refer me to web sites playing bird songs. And indeed the wood thrush's song is a distinct "queedle-deep," and its reply. Too complex to be a sound-alike.
I keep track of my first hearing the Q&A, usually in the first two weeks of April. In 2007, it was April 26--the latest on record until this year. May 15? Those birds have some catching up to do.
Meanwhile, our nighttime songster--the chuck-will's-widow--has sent its highly distinctive call echoing through the forest for at least a month. They appear at the same time the lightning bugs do. I wonder if that's what they eat.
The Marys called after the show to say they were on the South Shore with an interest in dinner. Of course, they had a place in mind: Mizado Cucina, the new Latin American restaurant from the chefs who gave us Zea. It's open for about six months now, but I am hearing a wide range of opinions about it. On the other hand, it's almost always full.
The Marys tried Mizado shortly after it opened. As would expected in such early going, they weren't wowed by it. Mary Ann registered something familiar, though. "There are a lot of places in Los Angeles just like this," she said.
The kitchen at Mizado plays with the dishes of both Mexico and South America. Some of the menu is familiar, but most of it engenders not even a glimmer of familiarity. So the Taste Buds (Gary Darling, Hans Limburg and Greg Reggio, the chefs and owners) are up to the same tricks we saw in their Semolina concept, then again, more stridently, in Zea. In its first year or two, I couldn't dope out what Zea was aiming for. The answer: to create an appetite for the kind of food at Zea.
Tables outside the restaurant are clearly made for drinking, not eating. But Mary Ann cannot be pulled inside when open-air tables are available. And it was crowded inside, to boot. On the other hand, it was cold outside, enough that when the sun went down the waiters fired up the flaming heaters.
The Marys are there first. When I sit down, I find a martini before me. It came from Chef Duke Locicero and his wife Kelly, who are at the bar inside. We banter for awhile until I ask a question whose answer is not good. "How'd things go for Mother's Day at the restaurant?"
"Horrible!" said Chef Duke. "It was the slowest Mother's Day we've ever had." It didn't console him for me to say that I heard the same report from many other restaurateurs. Is Mother's Day over? Or has it shifted to new ways of coddling Mom?
[caption id="attachment_42388" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Chorizo fundido.[/caption]
We started with the most familiar of the three isotopes of guacamole. Then an assortment of salsas, ranging from mellow and creamy to stridently hot. The Marys can't have a Mexican meal (not even a very offbeat one) without including chorizo fundido--the hot sausage stirred into chili con queso. Mizado goes far afield of this, without any rewards for the eater.
[caption id="attachment_42389" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Street tacos.[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_42390" align="alignright" width="314"]
Duck tamale.[/caption]On to bigger things: a few "street tacos" (the little soft ones filled with just about anything) and a Caesar salad (a Mexican dish, you know). And a duck taco, wrapped in corn husks and sprinkled with goat cheese. Now we're getting somewhere. Still, all of this is tapas size or a little bigger, with few prices topping $10. You are clearly here to browse.
One of the two dishes that didn't fit the little plates is the best dish of the night. Pescado Campeche is a nice slab of fresh Gulf fish, right off the grill, striped with several sauces, dominated by a sharp, herbal chimichurri and a rich serrano crema. Delicious eating. The only objection I could have is that there are semi-mashed potatoes under the fish, which to me is a textural mismatch.
[caption id="attachment_42391" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Pescado Campeche[/caption]
The other entree was a tri-tip steak (not something we see much in these precincts, but hard to avoid in California), grilled over a wood fire, with potatoes mixed with cubes of pork belly. Tasty enough, but with that Zea-style oddity that takes some getting used to.
[caption id="attachment_42392" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Churros with toasted meringue.[/caption]
Dessert was astonishing: bread pudding churros topped with peaks of vanilla-tinged meringue, the latter toasted in the oven. This is a beautiful dessert, very rich.
So now I can tell callers I've tried Mizado. Which means "a crossing of points of view." Or something like that.
[title type="h5"]Mizado Cocina. Mid-City: 5080 Pontchartrain Blvd.. 504-885-5555. [/title]
Written by Tom Fitzmorris May 29, 2014 12:01 in
