Saturday, November 28. Indirection. Biagio's. Some days dissolve in vats of indecision. While trying to decide where or whether to have breakfast, we arrived at lunchtime. Meanwhile, the Marys snacked on grilled leftover Thanksgiving ham (which really is a treat), and weren't hungry for lunch, after all. I made my Saturday errand run and grabbed a box of sushi at Rouse's to tide me over until dinner. When will I learn? Supermarket sushi looks appetizing, but is inevitably terrible. (Unless you happen to be in the store when the sushi crew is on site, making the stuff that dopes like me will buy in the next day or two. And even then. . .)
It was a lovely day. I considered putting the Christmas tree in the stand, so we could decorate it tonight. But I didn't. I thought about rebuilding the roof on the pump house. But I didn't. I'm still tired from Thanksgiving.
I persuaded the Marys to have dinner with me at Biagio's, a new Italian restaurant in Mandeville. It took over the site of the thoroughly mediocre DeAngelo's Pizzeria a few months ago. People have been telling me good things about it practically since it opened. It occupies a spare space in a strip mall: uncovered windows, an open but entirely utilitarian kitchen, and a big deli display case full of cheeses, meats, and sauces. A bright fluorescent light in the case over-illuminates a large section of the dining room.
Biagio's menu is unchallenging, but it's not standard New Orleans Italian either. Biagio Cucco, the owner, is a native of a small town near Naples, and his flavors are from that delicious, red-sauce-flooded part of Italy. The prices are a shade above those I expected, but the portions are larger still. The $8 Caprese salad, for example, would be a generous portion for two people, and could feed four.
The moment the waitress came over, I ordered a pizza. The six-inch pizza is apparently measured by radius, not diameter. It was more than enough to split among the three of us. The crust lacked crispness (I suspect a conveyor belt oven is at work), but the sauce and cheeses were most appetizing, and we more or less inhaled the pie, even as the Marys swore they didn't really want it.
While the girls picked at salads, I had a crock of lentil soup. Someday, I will have a bad lentil soup; it hasn't happened yet, and certainly not this night. A measure of how good it was is that Mary Leigh ate a few spoonfuls of it, with an approving look after each. My daughter is eating beans? This is something new.
Then came that long, horizontally-stacked salad Caprese. We took half of it home. Way too big.
I asked about the fish of the day. "Steak," the waitress said. Tuna steak? "No, beef steak." That's the fish of the day? "Some days we have a fish of the day, but tonight it's the steak of the day." Yes, it did say that (in Italian) on the menu.
So let's have this stuffed pork chop special. The stuffing was Italian sausage and spinach. It could have been better if the chop had been thicker, and if they hadn't seriously overcooked it. The pasta and mushrooms on the side, in a sort of Marsala sauce, didn't do much for me.
The Marys were happier. Mary Ann had before her a slab of pretty broiled salmon. A caper-and-butter sauce flowed over both the fish and the accompanying pasta. Mary Leigh called for penne arrabbiata, adding that she really meant it when she said she wanted it spicy. Indeed, the sauce was well-loaded with crushed red pepper. But ML likes red pepper, and was entirely pleased. Neither of the girls could finish what they had, though. Too big. Just what we need. More leftovers at home.
At some point during the meal, Biagio figured out who I was and came over with his wife Elisa and their two young sons. "We hope they're not bothering you," Elisa said. The owners' kids in an Italian restaurant bothering us? It bothers me that we don't see it more often. It's a universal sight in family-run trattorias in Italy.
We talked with the couple for quite awhile, and learned that Biagio's previous restaurants were in the Riverwalk. The Riverwalk, according to a friend who had a shop there, opened too soon after the hurricane, and led to some serious losses. Can't do much volume in a tourist mall when no tourists are coming to town. This, I gathered, was also Biagio's story of why he ain't dere no more.
The Marys concluded that this was a restaurant worthy of being on their regular rotation. High praise from those two. Mary Ann did have one problem, though. They serve iced tea here in cheap plastic glasses of a kind she hates so much that she'd prefer a paper cup. When the chocolate gelato arrived for Mary Leigh's dessert, it came in a styrofoam cup. Biagio's is too good and slightly too expensive not to have glassware and china for these uses. And they really need curtains on those windows, to fool us into thinking that it's not a parking lot but a piazza out there.
Biagio's Pizzeria. Mandeville: 318 Dalwill Dr. 985-674-3009. Pizza. Pasta. Italian.
