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Started By
Message
Tried to use a credit card at Mosca's
Posted on 4/20/24 at 5:32 pm
Posted on 4/20/24 at 5:32 pm
It was in about the 71-72 period, took the young wife there. Really a great restaurant a couple miles west of Avondale in the swamp. I did not realize they were a cash only operation, having nothing to do with Carlos. They would have nothing to do with a credit card. Finally agreed to accept a check on the basis that I could wash dishes as the alternative.
Ever since then, I carry cash
Ever since then, I carry cash
Posted on 4/20/24 at 5:34 pm to Trevaylin
Coat & tie required, the old man took us out there about 73 or so.
12 year old me got something pedestrian, I remember it being smoky in the dining room.
12 year old me got something pedestrian, I remember it being smoky in the dining room.
Posted on 4/20/24 at 5:35 pm to Trevaylin
As in 1971? Went there about a year ago. Not really that good IMO. Tasted like some Walmart chicken thighs cooked in a jar of prego.
Posted on 4/20/24 at 5:36 pm to Trevaylin
quote:
the 71-72 period, took the young wife there
Pics?
Posted on 4/20/24 at 5:37 pm to soccerfüt
quote:
Coat & tie required
That cant be the case anymore, can it ?
I do know that it used to be BYOB until fairly recently .. and by ‘recently’ in terms of this restaurant , i mean like until 20 or 25 yrs ago .
Posted on 4/20/24 at 5:37 pm to Trevaylin
OP this thread reads as if you started typing in the middle of a conversation and forgot to include the first half
to simpler times
to simpler times
Posted on 4/20/24 at 5:38 pm to LEASTBAY
Oysters Mosca, chicken piccata, and seafood salads were terrific. Carlos was in charge.
Posted on 4/20/24 at 5:41 pm to LEASTBAY
quote:
Tasted like some Walmart chicken thighs
Are the chicken thighs at Walmart different or something?
Posted on 4/20/24 at 5:41 pm to Corinthians420
quote:
OP this thread reads as if you started typing in the middle of a conversation and forgot to include the first half
Right ? As if he were replying to some thread i missed about ‘Weird Experiences you had trying to use credit ‘ or ‘Your feelings on cash vs using a card’ or something , and accidentally started his own thread hehe
Posted on 4/20/24 at 5:42 pm to Corinthians420
Dude, get your Harbrace handbook out and diagram you thought to help understand it.
Posted on 4/20/24 at 5:44 pm to Trevaylin
quote:
It was in about the 71-72 period, took the young wife there. Really a great restaurant a couple miles west of Avondale in the swamp. I did not realize they were a cash only operation, having nothing to do with Carlos. They would have nothing to do with a credit card. Finally agreed to accept a check on the basis that I could wash dishes as the alternative.
Ever since then, I carry cash
This post was edited on 4/20/24 at 5:46 pm
Posted on 4/20/24 at 5:50 pm to LSU Grad Alabama Fan
Lol it’s one thing if he’d started the thread about something that just happened last night, but it happened over a half century ago.. This is the OT we all signed up for !
Posted on 4/20/24 at 5:52 pm to Trevaylin
Have been wanting to go there 30+ years, but still haven't managed it. Due mostly to usually being broke when I was in NO, though it being in the middle of fricking nowhere hasn't helped.
Calvin Trillin's classic essay on Mosca's
Calvin Trillin's classic essay on Mosca's
quote:
From Highway 90, which runs through what people in New Orleans call the West Bank (the side of the Mississippi River that someone studying a map would be tempted to call south of the city), Mosca’s looks roughly the same as it did in 1946, around the time John Mosca came back from the war in Europe—a small white clapboard building on a deserted stretch of a double-lane highway thirty or forty minutes from the center of the city. When John’s father, Provino Mosca, who had previously operated a restaurant in Chicago Heights, Illinois, opened for business that year, he moved his family into a few rooms in the back. The area around Mosca’s is still deserted. My friend James Edmunds, who lives in New Iberia, Louisiana, about a hundred and thirty miles to the west, says, “It always had the feel of a neighborhood restaurant, except there was no neighborhood.”
The double-lane, though, has seen some changes. Development has stretched from the Mississippi River into what I remember as a vast darkness. When I began going to Mosca’s, in the early sixties, we used to interrupt our conversation in the car—a conversation that was likely to be about, say, the possibility that Mosca’s Chicken a la Grande was even better than the baked-oysters-and-bread-crumbs dish identified on the menu as Oysters Mosca—so we could concentrate on peering into the blackness for Mosca’s Budweiser sign. It was illuminated, as I remember, by one bulb. When we spotted the sign, we could warn whoever was driving that in a moment he’d have to cut across the break in the median strip into Mosca’s parking lot, which was and is made of gravel. Ten or twelve years ago, a storm destroyed the Budweiser sign. The Moscas tried to get another one exactly like it, but Anheuser-Busch wasn’t distributing signs like that anymore. I learned about the fate of the sign only recently, when I spent some time at Mosca’s—partly to see how a place reluctant to change had fared through the disasters that have brought involuntary change to New Orleans in the past five years and partly to catch up a bit on Mosca family history and partly to see if eating there a few nights in a row would finally, after all these years, give me my fill of Chicken a la Grande...
Mosca’s looks roughly the same as it did in 1946, around the time John Mosca came back from the war in Europe—a small white clapboard building on a deserted stretch of a double-lane highway thirty or forty minutes from the center of the city. When John’s father, Provino Mosca, who had previously operated a restaurant in Chicago Heights, Illinois, opened for business that year, he moved his family into a few rooms in the back. The area around Mosca’s is still deserted. My friend James Edmunds, who lives in New Iberia, Louisiana, about a hundred and thirty miles to the west, says, “It always had the feel of a neighborhood restaurant, except there was no neighborhood.”
The double-lane, though, has seen some changes. Development has stretched from the Mississippi River into what I remember as a vast darkness. When I began going to Mosca’s, in the early sixties, we used to interrupt our conversation in the car—a conversation that was likely to be about, say, the possibility that Mosca’s Chicken a la Grande was even better than the baked-oysters-and-bread-crumbs dish identified on the menu as Oysters Mosca—so we could concentrate on peering into the blackness for Mosca’s Budweiser sign. It was illuminated, as I remember, by one bulb. When we spotted the sign, we could warn whoever was driving that in a moment he’d have to cut across the break in the median strip into Mosca’s parking lot, which was and is made of gravel. Ten or twelve years ago, a storm destroyed the Budweiser sign. The Moscas tried to get another one exactly like it, but Anheuser-Busch wasn’t distributing signs like that anymore. I learned about the fate of the sign only recently, when I spent some time at Mosca’s—partly to see how a place reluctant to change had fared through the disasters that have brought involuntary change to New Orleans in the past five years and partly to catch up a bit on Mosca family history and partly to see if eating there a few nights in a row would finally, after all these years, give me my fill of Chicken a la Grande.
As my mention of the Budweiser sign indicates, I am not one of the people who claim that they were guided off the double-lane in those days by the smell of garlic. It is true that Mosca’s devotion to garlic has remained unchanged since the days when Provino Mosca was at the stove, and almost the same can be said of the menu; it’s not the sort of place that surprises you with its daily specials. I could give my order before I get out of the car. I should say “our order,” since the family-style portions served at Mosca’s make it not the place to go for that contemplative dinner alone. We’ve always wanted Italian Crab Salad, Oysters Mosca, Spaghetti Bordelaise, Chicken a la Grande, Shrimp Mosca, and Mosca’s Sausage. At times, we have ordered the Chicken Cacciatore as well as the Chicken a la Grande. I consider that a permissible variation. (Brett Anderson, the restaurant critic for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, who joined me at Mosca’s one evening on my recent trip, considers ordering both chicken dishes a necessity rather than a variation, since he remains ambivalent about which one he prefers.) We have never ordered Chicken Cacciatore instead of Chicken a la Grande. I do not consider that a permissible variation. While waiting for the food to arrive—Mosca’s cooks everything to order—I have often been in discussions about how interesting it would be sometime to try the quail or the Cornish hen or even the steak. We have never ordered any of those things.
The proprietorship of Mosca’s has changed only with the generations, and there has always been a Mosca in the kitchen. When Provino died, in 1962, the cooking was taken over by his daughter, Mary, and, eventually, her husband, a former Louisiana oysterman named Vincent Marconi. His family was originally from the town in Italy where Provino Mosca was born—San Benedetto del Tronto, on the Adriatic. Provino’s widow, Lisa, also known as Mama Mosca, became the proprietor of Mosca’s. (I have always treasured her for having said to a reporter from the New Orleans States-Item, in 1977, “You can write all that you want, it won’t bother me because I cannot read or write.”) By the time Mary retired, John’s wife, the former Mary Jo Angellotti, some of whose forebears had also made the journey from San Benedetto del Tronto to Chicago Heights, had been helping with the cooking for nearly twenty years, and she took over as chef. At Mosca’s, the chef does not oversee the cooking; she cooks. When Mosca’s was given a James Beard award, in 1999, Mary Jo apologized for not being able to come to the ceremony in New York to accept it. She said, “We’d have to close the restaurant.”
Posted on 4/20/24 at 6:05 pm to Kafka
Awwwa the chicken Cacciatori. It was very good. We had an older member of the Marcello family living next door to us and they did a good job preserving the ambiance of Mosca's
Posted on 4/20/24 at 6:07 pm to Trevaylin
Fun fact: The name of the restaurant is pronounced “MO-sca’s” and it’s “MOE” like the guy in the Three Stooges .
Posted on 4/20/24 at 6:10 pm to BK Lounge
quote:
That cant be the case anymore, can it ?
No coat and tie required------------cash is still king and no credit cards accepted as far as I know.
The food is good for being as pedestrian as it is. It is definitely not haute cuisine, but very good stuff many families still cook at home.
This post was edited on 4/20/24 at 6:26 pm
Posted on 4/20/24 at 6:11 pm to WaterLink
Lol way to use the embed feature
Posted on 4/20/24 at 6:20 pm to Trevaylin
quote:
I did not realize they were a cash only operation, having nothing to do with Carlos.
Lord I hope this is a joke All that land on the south side of 90 from westwego to st Charles parish was or still is owned by the connected.
Posted on 4/20/24 at 6:21 pm to Trevaylin
I ate there in the 80’s when I lived in NOLA. It was good. Knowing its mob history and remote location was a little eerie back then.
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