The Sou'Wester pork jowl BLT sounded too mouthwatering to pass up, even if we were way past tomato season, but at $7 per sandwich, I had to ask our waiter how large the lunch-time portion was. He indicated that the sammie was small, perhaps the size of my hand, and that depending on my appetite, I might need a side or two to supplement it. I appreciated his frankness.

Turns out that size wasn't a problem. Flavor was. Texture was. Presentation was. If you had sat that sandwich on a table, without informing me of its place of origin, I would have thought it came from Potbelly or Cosi or maybe even a government cafeteria, not a Mandarin Oriental restaurant under the watchful eye of Eric Ziebold. (Well, I guess the fatty, gelatinous jowl meat immediately places the sandwich under the trendy nose-to-tail banner, and therefore renders it gourmet, but trust me, the meat alone couldn't save this sucker.)

The bread was hard and crackly despite no apparent turn on the griddle or in a pan (was this oven baked?). The ingredients, including a sad single round of tomato on one half of the sandwich, were thrown together between the hardened bread slices with little concern for balance or appearance. The sandwich's flavor was mostly provided by the double wallop of fatty pork and fatty mayonnaise. It had all the subtlety of Marion Barry.

I had hoped the side dish of pickled vegetables would help cut the fat parade, so I popped a pink floret of cauliflower into my mouth. I almost spit it out. Wanting to check my palate, I asked my tablemate to sample the pickled veggie. She took a bite of the cauliflower and immediately made a face. We agreed on one thing: Ziebold and chef de cuisine Rachael Harriman need to jettison the caraway seeds in the pickling liquid. The anise overtones just don't work.

Our entire lunch wasn't a bust, however. My friend's fried chicken ($13) boasted a crispy, well-seasoned coating, which was moist and flavorful despite its long dunk in the fryer oil. My friend kept poking her finger into the leg meat to show me the puddle of grease on it. It didn't bother me as much as it did her.

The best part of the meal, by far, was the appetizer of crab fritters ($12), which was actually closer in spirit to Frank Ruta's famous fry plate at Palena Cafe. The dish was loaded with delicate, browned nuggets of moist crab meat as well as toothsome rounds of lightly fried onion bulbs and sunny circles of lemon slices, all ready for dipping in the accompanying green goddess dressing.

Unfortunately, by the time I pretended to eat my pork jowl BLT, and its sad side of pickled veggies, the memory of that appetizer had faded far away. All I was left with was one unavoidable thought: This was not the kind of food I was hoping for after attending the Sou'Wester opening in September.

Scratch that.

During a phone conversation yesterday, Ziebold said that South by Southwest, which replaces Cafe MoZU at the Mandarin Oriental, wouldn't open until September. The problem, Ziebold said, is that the original designer envisioned a "bold, bright" space. Unfortunately, that wasn't Ziebold's vision.

"We were looking to make a statement by not making a statement. You know what I mean?" Ziebold told Y&H. "I'm a less-is-more kind of person...It wasn't going in that direction."

But it took the SXSW team six weeks to pull the plug on the first designer, Ziebold said. The new designer, based in Los Angeles, is working out far better, helping put together a space that doesn't feel so designed, the chef added.

Still, the new designers have run into delays, too, whether learning that the curtain fabric they originally wanted was no longer in production or trying to design custom-made china for South by Southwest. The china maker is apparently based in Colombia, Ziebold said. "So the process of getting samples is not exactly efficient," he deadpans.

Photo courtesy of the Mandarin Oriental

Ziebold was not at all defensive. He even agreed with my basic premise: that MoZU's new name, South by Southwest, said more about the hotel where the restaurant is housed than the cuisine itself, which presumably will funnel Eastern Shore flavors. But he wanted me to understand where he was coming from. His concept, as you might expect from the City Paper's top toque, was pretty well thought out.

If you walk outside the hotel, he says, and into the D.C. neighborhood that is SW, you start to get a sense the slower pace that once marked this sleepy Southern town. You might feel it down at the Maine Avenue Fish Market, where folks still haggle over the price of rockfish, or along the Tidal Basin, where you can still take a leisurely walk.

South by Southwest will capture, in part, "this mindset of Southern hospitality and Southern ease and comfort, but in Southwest Washington," Ziebold says.

Photo courtesy of Mandarin Oriental

CityZen's second-in-command in the kitchen, Rachel Harriman, will be the chef de cuisine at the revamped MoZU, which will serve, according to Sietsema, "blue crab soup, chicken and dumplings, braised rabbit leg with grits and hush puppies with honey butter," not to mention desserts like "carrot cake, strawberry shortcake, peach cobbler and grasshopper pie."

Simply put, Y&H loves the idea of a white-tablecloth restaurant embracing local/regional flavors. We can only assume Maryland fried chicken will have a place on the menu, too.

What Y&H doesn't love?

The name of the place: South by Southwest, a reference to the hotel's location in the District. I'm sorry but it's a terrible name for a restaurant looking to funnel the Eastern Shore. It's more about the hotel than about the cuisine. South by Southwest doesn't make me think of the Chesapeake. It makes me think of overzealous indie bands trying to impress a bunch of asshole A&R reps....oh, and puke in the middle of Sixth Street in Austin.

It's not too late, folks. Give us a better name! The restaurant is not expected to relaunch until early this summer.

Photo courtesy of Mandarin Oriental

Well, false alarm. Elizabeth Carp, marketing manager at the Mandarin Oriental, says it's all quiet on the southwestern front at the hotel. No fire, no smoke, no nothing. A D.C. Fire Department spokesman confirms Carp's information. There's no report of a fire this morning at the Mandarin or even nearby.

As you were.