Sunday, February 13, 2011.
Mole Negro. A Good Day To Do Eighty.
Mary Ann wrings the most activity out of any agenda. She had a complex plan this morning. I'd eat breakfast alone while recovering from the shock of the final hotel bill. Meanwhile, she'd shop at the Galleria, a mile or so from the hotel. Then we'd pick a restaurant for lunch, out of an article in the Texas Monthly highlighting the fifty best Tex-Mex restaurants in the homeland of that cuisine.
After a bit of disagreement about the restaurant (she was leery of the neighborhood of my choice) we checked out of the hotel and drove to Pico's. Bellaire is a Houston suburb that has seen better days, but it didn't look too bad to me. Pico's Mex-Mex (sic) is well-worn but entirely acceptable by my standards. It was just below Mary Ann's much more squeamish threshold. But she put up with it.
The article in the Monthly said that Pico's specialty was mole negro in the Oaxacan style. That hit me where I live. I think few sauces in the word exceed a well-made mole in eating excitement.
Pico's served us a tremendous meal, in every sense of the word. We began with a big salad of guacamole and pico de gallo, then really start eating. The Oaxacan mole came with two breast quarters of chicken--and that's a lot of chicken. Both the chicken and the sauce were exactly what I was hoping for. The difference between this and the more familiar mole poblano was that for the black mole the ingredients are cooked longer and hotter. It sounded something like the way a roux is made darker. Well, it works in terms of flavor. I loved this stuff.
Mary Ann, for all her protestations about my always forcing her to eat too much, had a skirt steak of substantial size, sizzling and smoking, topped with chimichurri and underlined with grilled onions on a hot plate. That was exciting eating, too.
We got to talking with manager Alejandro Richards, who seemed to know everybody in the dining room. He apologized for his distinctly non-Mexican surname. "My father was from Cornwall, England," he said. This began a conversation about Cornish pasties, which bear some resemblance to Mexican empanadas. We talked with him for a long time about that and Mexican food generally.
Fully stuffed, we struck out for home--a long way from here. But the weather was perfect. Mary Ann took the wheel so she could blast down I-10 at her usual breakneck speed. Three stops: one in Winnie for gas, another at the Louisiana welcome station for a bathroom, and one more to settle a long-running curiosity.
Whenever someone calls me on the radio show to ask for a source of boudin, inevitably someone else will call to say that Best Stop in Scott is the place to go, even though it's a 283-mile round trip from New Orleans. Numerous Cajuns of my acquaintance back up this impractical strategy.
Mary Ann, who loves all kinds of sausages, has wanted to try this vaunted boudin for years. One thing after another (usually getting lost) has prevented us from doing so. We got lost again today, heading south on LA 93. Why don't we Mapquest this stuff? Best Stop is north of the I-10. We didn't go that way because last time we did that we didn't find it. We hadn't gone far enough north, it turned out.
Best Stop is a classic Cajun butcher shop, located in a grocery the size of a convenience store. The meat counter was busy. We bought two enormous links of hot boudin, ready to eat, for $3.95. I thought about what the price for a similar rasher would be at Cochon Butcher as I took a bite. Good! Not drive-283-miles good, but good indeed, with a substantial component of the critical pork liver and a more than mild pepper level.
Okay. We can scratch that off our list now.
The rest of the way home, we talked about what a great way this had been to celebrate our anniversary. Mary Ann said she was astounded that I'd take the time off for this little trip, and that we ought to do it more often. I'm all for that.
Pico's Mex-Mex. Bellaire (Houston): 5941 Bellaire Blvd. 713-662-8383. www.picos.net.
Best Stop Supermarket. Scott, LA: 615 Hwy 93 N., 337-233-5805. Map.
