Saturday, June 4, 2016.
Dodging Thunderstorms Between Five Stars.
The immense but intermittent rainstorms keep coming, growing in threat as the day wears on. I make my Saturday route, and find myself hungry as I head toward the dry cleaners and then home. I see the Covington Bud's Broiler, and decide that enough time has elapsed since the Marys talked me into going there for the first time. That was only a few days after it opened. No surprise that a mob of would-be customers descended on the place, making normal operations difficult. The staff hadn't been at it long enough to have all its moves down. And all the other problems of recently-opened restaurants.
It is much better today. At last, it has become possible to order a Number One with cheese without getting into a lengthy discussion with an order-taker who swears that there is no such thing as a Number One with cheese. They just make it for me, and they get it right the first time.
On the other hand, I continue to find that all Bud's Broilers are not the equals of the Bud's of the 1960s and 1970s. The charcoal grilling is still there, but this is not the flavor I gloried in so much in my high school years. Or has my taste changed? That possibility always looms.
Mary Ann's current dining program is that she will dine with me only once a day. We indulge a deux at Pardo's, a five-star restaurant where we have not been in awhile. The weather--which caused a little flooding here and there around Mandeville--has the dining room a little less full its usual fullness.
This is the kind of restaurant where, through most of my life, I would have a five-course meal, at least. Today, it's only three. Or two and a half, since MA doesn't eat dessert.
[caption id="attachment_51703" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Soup du jour one night at Pardo's.[/caption]
We both begin with the soup du jour, an imaginative but home-style collection of beans, little meatballs and Italian sausage. Then right to the entree. For MA it's a ribeye steak with mushrooms and spinach in a brown sauce. She seemed to like it. I was busy with a very generous bouillabaisse, with mussels, two kinds of fish, shrimp and a few other seafoods in a lusty seafood broth.
[caption id="attachment_51702" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Bouillabaisse from Pardo's.[/caption]
All of this is from the hand of Marvin Tweedy, Pardo's most-of-the-time chef. (Sometimes he takes over the kitchen at the associated Forks and Corks.)
[caption id="attachment_51701" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Lemon icebox pie.[/caption]
The aforementioned dessert was a very sweet lemon ice box pie, rich and big enough to have served at least one other eater. Couldn't polish it off myself.
The rain had stopped by the time we were finished. Embarking in Mary Ann's car, I see my good camera on the floor. I wish I had remembered to bring it in with me, so I could get better photos than the ones here. Telephone-cameras never quite give me what I want.
Pardo's. Covington: 69305 Hwy 21. 985-893-3603.