I'm going to keep this simple: I believe it's impossible for anyone to not like Mondo.  Susan Spicer's intent with this new restaurant, located in Lakeview, was that every diner would find something to his or her taste, and the carefully crafted menu accomplishes this task.  It might be true that any restaurant serving pizza can boast that it satisfies even finicky eaters.  But what Mondo does is sneak subtle culinary lessons into even the tamest plates, so that nonadventurous patrons will feel satisfied and enlightened at the same time.  Here are some examples, from our first Mondo visit, of the easy-to-enjoy twists put on comfortable classics.  First, our snack of caramel-bacon popcorn:

Do you like caramel corn? Then you like caramel-bacon corn.

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Since moving to New Orleans, we've had lots of visitors--close friends, family, high-school buddies, friends of friends--and they all want good food.  It's one of the main reasons people come here: the food.  You know you're gonna get it, and you know it'll (usually) be really good.

The question of where to go for it has been an ongoing project for the past two years--taking photos, notes, writing reviews, compiling lists so we'd have a good base of places to suggest to visitors, whether we were accompanying them or not (the list is kept here, online, so I won't lose it).  During our first year, we ate out in as many different places as our budget allowed, but stuck mostly to the mid-priced restaurants in our neighborhood; one of those places was Boucherie, in the Riverbend.

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