AVONDALE, Louisiana — If I could only have one dinner in New Orleans, it would be at Mosca's. Yes, my favorite New Orleans spot isn't technically in the city. That's part of the charm. And that's why I went there last week, sitting down with former Mayor Mitch Landrieu at a groaning table filled with Oysters Mosca, Chicken a la Grande and a couple of meatballs An unremarkable-looking red sauce roadhouse perched on the side of Highway 90 — New Orleans is one way and Acadiana the other — Mosca's somehow manages to be both a hidden gem and bucket-list icon. Those who know know, as the saying goes. After opening in 1946, it was a fun, cash-only spot for a pair of couples or groups of friends. A young local reporter named Walter Isaacson reviewed it at the time — his clip is still framed on the wall. Then in 2010, Calvin Trillin wrote a love letter and Oysters Mosca became foodie famous. Alongside the chicken, with its garlic bath, the pasta bordelaise, the crab-speckled dinner salad and to-die-for shrimp, Mosca's became such a destination that it's common to see sprinter vans filled with epicurious pilgrims in the gravel-and-grass highway frontage. This is an Italian Creole mecca — yes, that's its own food genre— and it neatly captures the singularity of New Orleans. (I know what you're thinking: Red sauce in New Orleans?) This city is in the South but not fully of the South, closer spiritually and ethnically to fellow port towns around the world than Bible Belt burgs a couple hours north. Since marrying a native, and eventually moving here, I've described New Orleans as one part Deep South, one part Caribbean and one part Western Europe. Thankfully, and tragically, it has the vices and virtues of all three. But I’m a transplant, so I’ll let Landrieu riff about his town. This is where his dad was once mayor, too, and his sister represented Louisiana in the U.S. Senate. Landrieu was first in state politics, serving as lieutenant governor of Louisiana and then mayor of New Orleans from 2010 to 2018. Most recently, though, he served in Washington as former President Joe Biden’s infrastructure czar. Together we talked about New Orleans, Democratic politics, why he's uneasy about the DSA and why he thinks he, and not Pete Buttigieg, could've been the breakout mayor-turned-presidential-candidate in 2020. Laissez les… [TheTopNews] Read More.
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