Wednesday, September 5, 2012.
Orange Bottom. Mosca's Is Back.
For those of us who are addicted to oranges (I eat two or three every day), these are the times that try our souls. All the American sources are about finished for the year. What little is coming in from California is expensive, thick-skinned and not very good. Most of the oranges in stores now comes from Chile or South Africa--two growing areas whose produce has been imported only in the past decade or so. Five or six bucks for a three-pound bag. Compare that to the dollar for five pounds that I remember spending in the peak of the season in the 1990s.
The oranges on the rack now have another increasingly rare component: seeds. The American fruit-eater doesn't like to find seeds in any of his or her fruit. (We also don't like bones in our food.) Developers of citrus hybrids in recent times have done all they can to eliminate seeds from oranges, going so far as to sue beekeepers whose hives are near orange orchards. (The bees have the effrontery to bring pollen from orange flowers from seed-bearing varieties.)
But I've noticed that the seeded oranges I've eaten for the past month or two have been much juicier and better-tasting than those without. Nobody's usually watching me as I spit the seeds into the trash can. I wonder if swallowing them would cause problems. Probably not.
Lisa Mosca wrote to tell me that her family's restaurant was back open again after a few days of downtime following Isaac. The only serious damage was that their sign fell down and got busted up. That's a more serious issue at Mosca's than in most restaurants, because it's so easy to zoom by the place on US 90 without seeing it. I suspect at least a third of their customers have to make a U-turn up the highway a quarter-mile or so and then double back.
I thought I'd call Lisa on the air to ask about this and the old (1946) restaurant in general. Turns out that they don't shut down for the entire month of August, as they once did. Other than that, everything was the same. She told me it was the first time anyone from Mosca's had ever gone on a radio show to talk. I had to tell her that her late father Johnny had gone on the air with me not once but twice. One of those times it was he who called me, instead of the other way around.
Talking with Lisa created a hunger for Mosca's food, which I haven't had in awhile. Mary Ann was on the other side of the lake, but we've been talking about going to Mosca's (she'd never been) for years. She said she'd come over, and bring the other Mary. And maybe ML's boyfriend.
She blew past the restaurant, of course. ML took one look at the place and thought the worst, which is a typical first reaction to the old roadhouse. They both found it nice inside, though. And certainly the menu was right up their alley: pasta with a good red sauce or bordelaise. Meatballs. Italian sausage. Chicken grandee. Oysters Italian style. (ML will eat the sauce, if not the oysters.) We wanted to get the marinated crab salad, but the guys who go out crabbing were laid low by Hurricane Isaac, which hit hardest in the heart of crab waters. Mosca's kitchen has always been a stickler for ingredients right out of the water, so this was a problem. Also on the table was a casserole of eggplant, red sauce, and cheese--something not on the menu, and that I didn't remember seeing here before.
The rest of the meal was like all the others I've had here. Namely, exactly like all the Mosca food that came before. The menu changes only in its pricing. (Which may be getting little ahead of itself.) The items and the way they look and taste is as changeless as the man in the moon. Whatever you remember about past Mosca's eats will still be there when you go again.
Which is a problem that they will have to deal with some day. While Mosca's has remained steady, the other Italian restaurants around town have continued to advance in variety and quality. The result is that Mosca's doesn't stand out quite like it once did.
On the other hand, they have so many and such enthusiastic regular customers that everybody still is clearly very pleased to be there. That was certainly the case for four National Guard soldiers, going through a classic family-style Mosca's overfeed in their camos. Their host said, "For all these guys do, I just gotta take them to the best restaurant in town!"
Mosca's. Westwego: 4137 US 90. 504-436-9942.
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.
