Sunday, March 28. Macaroni Grill. New Satsuma Tree. A letter from LSU for Mary Leigh--which I took as another one of the dozens of pitches from colleges around the country--proved much more exciting for her. It was a final grade of B on the third correspondence course she'd taken through LSU, to make up for studies she missed during the first half of her sophomore year. She was allegedly being home-schooled then, having decided that she couldn't stand to return to Sacred Heart after her freshman year. The home-schooling idea worked out as badly as it did the first time we tried that idea, in sixth grade. Her main achievement this time was memorizing all the scripts of all eleven seasons of Frasier.
This course with the B was the last one she needed to graduate from high school. "I'm free!" she said, jubilant.
We celebrated with lunch at the Macaroni Grill. It was my idea, and it surprised her, given my animus towards chains. But there are some decent chains out there, and in recent months I've revisited a number of the better ones to flesh out my restaurant reviews online. People do want to know about the likes of this.
The Macaroni Grill is one of the decent chains. They've discovered that, for all its deliciousness, Italian food is neither a difficult cuisine nor one that requires expensive ingredients. That's the setup chains like to work with.
A visit here a few months ago revealed that Macaroni Grill handles pizza, salads, some pasta dishes, steaks, and some seafoods rather well. We tested a lot of that again, beginning with the bruschetta with tomatoes. Mary Leigh loves that dish and this version of it. I had a fried version of a salad Caprese, with slabs of fresh-milk mozzarella covered with bread crumbs and panneed. I liked this; my daughter didn't. Neither of the Marys think fresh milk mozzarella is worth eating. They're also both Republicans, regardless of the enlightenment I've tried to impart to them on that subject, too.
She had pasta with red sauce--one of her staples. She ran out of hunger for it halfway through. It's not the equal of Bosco's, she said. On the other hand, the panneed sole before me wasn't bad at all. The fish was crusty and hot, cooked just about perfectly, topped with capers. The collection of orzo and parsley underneath was not much of a statement, and the fish was clearly not local and probably came in frozen--although it didn't come across that way. The price, in the mid-teens, was fair enough.
We left there to pick up some gardening stuff--time to fertilize my trees, and long past time to re-pot the spider plant on my bedroom windowsill. We made another stop at the fruit stand in Abita Springs. Local strawberries were still in good supply, but I must now face the fact that Louisiana oranges are finished for the year. I have about a two-week supply left. This means I was able to enjoy the juicy local navels for a full four months--the longest season ever in my twenty-five years of squeezing fresh oranges daily.
I thought I might get one more batch of navels when the man said he could sell me a whole crate of oranges. But these were from California. Pretty, but not as tasty. It was inevitable.
He did have something else interesting for me: a satsuma sapling from Louisiana stock. My one satsuma tree at home has struggled to grow a foot high, even though I was able to get eight satsumas from it one year. They must have grafted that one right before potting it. It survived the nights with temperatures in the teens this year. Maybe someday I'll have my own satsuma supply. Wish I could grow orange trees.
Romano's Macaroni Grill. Mandeville: 3410 US Hwy 190 985-727-1998. Italian.
