When we saw the Blind Tiger set up shop right next door to the Chimes in Covington we thought they were either crazy or extraordinarily self-confident. It was both, and before long it became apparent that self-confidence wasn’t enough. These two would not be long-time neighbors.
The empty building did not sit for long. Soon it was covered in fuschia paint. It began to look…Mexican. But it couldn’t be a Mexican place because there are already too many of those! It would be so fun to calculate the number of ordinary Mexican restaurants on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain per capita There are the longstanding ones like George’s and Garcia’s, and La Carreta, and the new hipper one, Habanero’s, which is a spinoff and upgrade of La Carreta. There are a few miscellaneous others, and now an ordinary but really hip and fun one called the Pink Agave has recently arrived on the scene.
Pink Agave originated in Hammond and has staked out the fun spot in the trail of ordinary Mexican places. As beautiful and hip as Habanero’s, the food is not as much of a focus here. The menu is really rather small, and is more concerned with coming off as clever, with catchy names and rhyming descriptions.
And no flan!!! What kind of place serving Mexican food has no flan? Instead there are a few desserts one would find in ordinary American food restaurants, like Brownie a la Mode, etc.
We went the very day Pink Agave opened, and the service was comically inept. The food was much better than I expected. They charge for chips and salsa, which is a practice usually found in better quality Mexican restaurants.
The ingredients here are certainly superior to those down the road at La Carreta. We got guacamole, chips, and salsa, and choriqueso. All of this was much better than at La Carreta.
The chips were thicker and greaseless and definitely not for the faint of teeth. The guacamole was the creamy variety with few ingredients, allowing the avocado to take center stage. The salsa was the fresh style and not overly spicy.
But it was the choriqueso here that we absolutely love. It is so simple - cheese sauce and very good quality ground chorizo. It is not a large portion of queso, but it is rich enough that more is not needed.
I think the tacos here are the best around. They come with corn tortilla doubles and a very generous portion of meat. Taco Tuesday here is a steal. There is so much meat on these and they are very filling. For .99 each the value here can’t be beat. We have had the birria, tinga, chorizo, and shrimp, and all are great. The birria especially is braised perfectly and it has a really good flavor.
We also love the chicken tinga, which is moist and crumbly, braised in a flavorful liquid. Very tasty. But I think the ground chorizo is my favorite. It seems to be a high quality chorizo, quite spicy with an admirable trail of grease. Not too much, just enough for you to know they mean it.
I want to come here every Taco Tuesday. Value like this is hard to find these days.
The rest of the food doesn’t impress us much. Once Tom got a Mexican pizza which was very puzzling indeed. It was on a pillowy tortilla, more like an arepas laying flat. A mess of meat and cheeses totalled up to just a mess. There wasn’t anything to recommend this.
We had taquitos once here and those were fine but nothing special. It’s hard to understand how there can be such a discrepancy between outstanding tacos, queso, guac, chips and salsa, and… everything else.
The place is fun and glamorous, and we go here more than we expected. Nothing has ever pulled us away from our old comfortable La Carreta. Until now.
