Friday, March 4, 2011.
Moving To The Windsor Court, While Staying At Home. In The Rain. La Iguana.
A very rainy day, but the Marys are in high spirits. Mary Ann picked up Mary Leigh at Tulane and they checked into the Windsor Court with the rest of MA's siblings for a Mardi Gras weekend. I was going to go, too, but yesterday I took a look at the state of the Lost Restaurants book, and knew that for the next three days I will have to use every minute to write. I'll make the deadline, but barely.
It was still raining when I went out for dinner. A few days ago someone on the radio show said that he'd been to La Iguana in Covington, and that he liked it. That, combined with an unusual yen I've had lately for Mexican food, moved me to go out in search of the place.
It's not a great location, except perhaps at lunchtime, when they might be getting a lot of lunch trade from the nearby St. Tammany courthouse. After dark, Columbia Street is dark, narrow, and not loaded with open businesses--although a large seafood house is about a block away.
The place looked busy when I arrived, although that was an illusion created by seating all the customers in the big windows visible as one drives by. The places looked good, and the people running it were young and welcoming.
So was an actual, living iguana, posing on a stick in a terrarium just inside the door. I looked at him and he looked at me.
The menu looked good, except for the usual missed opportunity: no mole poblano. However, here was queso flameado to start with. This is cheese on a hot skillet with ground chorizo sausage, something I find hard to resist. The service of this was a little unusual in that the skillet was so hot that it browned the bottom of the cheese to a leathery brown skin. I've never seen this before. However, there was the possibility that this is the "right" way to serve it, as opposed to the Americanized way. I decided it was good, but not preferable.
While I was rolling the cheese and chorizo into warm flour tortillas and mulling over the authenticity question, here came the fajitas I'd ordered for an entree. I wasn't halfway finished with the queso. I kicked myself for not remembering to specify that I wanted the appetizer first, then when the appetizer is finished, to bring me the entree. I keep thinking that this is so obvious that no restaurateur who had any sense of how his customers eat would do it any other way. But it keeps happening, in all kinds of restaurants, this imperative to get all the food out there as fast as possible. Drives me batty. Because now I had to decide which dish to allow to get cold while I ate the other.
The fajitas themselves were good--at least they were while they were still hot. It was a combination platter of chicken, beef, and more chorizo. (Did I mention that I never get enough chorizo?) It was sizzling and steaming so much it was tough to get a photo, as my lens kept steaming over.
There is no question that the main driver of fajitas sales is the excitement it creates when it emerges from the kitchen. You see one of those platters, and you can't resist.
I had flan for dessert, overly garnished in the gringo way with whipped cream, chocolate, and cherries. The custard itself was great. That's another thing I'll tell them next time: lay off the extras. They don't add, they take away.
La Iguana. Covington: 1345 N Columbia St. 985-327-5334.
