Wisdom of the Mexican restaurant line
Caldo de Res is as good as someone's mamma's gumbo. Try the version from Ideal Market first.
Follow the regulars; they now what they are doing.
At Ideal Market, diners collecting lunch routinely pass the grilled meats, stewed chicken, plantains and vegetables. Many continue towards the Caldo de res, a Mexican beef soup that is among the finest bowls of anything served in Baton Rouge.
It is comfort food of a high order: somebody’s mama’s gumbo, translated into Spanish.
Ideal Market has two locations in the city. Neither resembles a national chain supermarket, where the food is packaged, bar-coded and stripped of surprise. Ideal is a carnival. Mexican cookies grin from the shelves. Cakes glow beneath neon icing. Fresh fish give the evil eye.
At the back is a cafeteria counter beside great containers of aguas frescas—mango, tamarind and watermelon. The line offers grilled pork and chicken, stews, plantains and tamales from Nicaragua and Honduras. For years, the Caldo de Res was visible but overlooked. There was always some other temptation in the way.
This was my poor judgment.
I had the soup yesterday. It was ladled into a bowl of almost comic proportions, enough for two people. Beef shank had been simmered until it yielded to a spoon. Potato, carrot and squash sat in a broth lightly scented with tomato, garlic, bay leaves and peppercorns. Quarters of corn on the cob were retrieved and eaten by hand.
Caldo de res is less polished than consommé and less serious than stew. It occupies the sensible ground between them: rich without being heavy, restorative without being dull.
The regulars are always to be trusted.
—Mukul Verma
