Saturday, July 14, 2012.
Nostalgic Breakfast. Wishing For Real Mexican Food. Wish Granted.
It's Bastille Day. If any French restaurants are running a special menu to celebrate the Gallic independence day, I haven't heard about it. No festivals either, to my knowledge.
I began the day with yet another breakfast at the Courtyard in Covington. Now that the good scrambled eggs and bacon are back, I can indulge in the nostalgia. It's where the kids and I went every Saturday for years when they were little. In the months after Katrina, when the family was in Washington D.C. and I was home alone, I came here on Saturdays just to wallow in the memories. That still works.
I was supposed to have a radio show on WWL today, but when Drew Brees finally signed his monster contract with the Saints yesterday, the station felt it had to let the listeners talk about it until the cows come home. Oh, well. I've been in radio long enough to know that sports is without question king of the medium. (The most profitable radio station in America is WFAN, an all-sports station in New York.)
By some miracle, it didn't rain at all today. The sun dried out the grass enough for me to cut it. All the wet leaves in the trees cooled the air enough to make the two-hour job tolerable. Maybe even enjoyable. Anything to get out of my office and away from my desk, where I spent the rest of the day tooling up a new messageboard for the website.
Dinner at Taqueria La Noria in Mandeville. "The water well" is the meaning of the name, and they indeed have an old-time wishing well out front. The building is minimal, feeling a shade more substantial than a double-wide trailer. It looks nice inside despite that, and the staff of thoroughly Hispanic people are welcoming and pleasant. All the televisions play soap operas in Spanish.
Good eats. I began with the "Mexican flag," a plate of grilled chorizo sausage on the left, charred Anaheim peppers on the right, and white cheese down the center. This was much larger than I expected for an appetizer--certainly big enough for two or three, even at the $8 price. The entree was mostly street tacos with barbacoa and pulled pork. Breaking the symmetry was sopes--a kind of flat flour tortilla shaped something like a small pie shell, filled with cochinita pibil (roasted pork). All this tasted fine, and a distinct change from the usual Tex-Mex canon.
Why are these central-Mexican tacos always served with two tortillas?
Home at dusk. Got back to work, because I didn't know what else to do. I need some hobbies, and the time in which to pursue them. At the restaurant, I read an article in the New Yorker about some young motivational author whose books tell how to get everything done in four hours a week, and make a lot of money at the same time.
Taqueria La Noria. Mandeville: 1931 LA 59. 985-727-7917.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
