New Orleans' Best Fried Porkchop Po-Boy

"This was not a career move for any of the people who helped out, believe me. 
These were neighbors helping me out who wanted to get New Orleans rolling again and po-boys is New Orleans," said Guys owner Marvin Mathern in A Season of Night: New Orleans Life After Katrina by Ian McNulty.

             Just in case you suffer from the misfortune of not being born and raised in New Orleans, I am going to tell you a few thigs about the crown jewel of our local cuisine, the shotgun house of New Orleans eating, the po-boy. 

          By nine months of age the first words out of a baby born in New Orleans are not “Mommy” or “Daddy” contrary to what the parents may tell you.  The first words you’ll hear from little baby Boudreaux are a babbled, drooling version of Domilici’s or Tommy’s or Parkway Bakery.  Whatever the name of their favorite po-boy place is, they can say it.  By a year they can order for themselves jabbering roast beef and gravy, fried shrimp or oysters and, yes, they want it dressed.  And don’t be surprised when you see their fat little fingers grab a bottle of Crystal hot sauce and shake it like nobody’s business.  They know what they want and they know where they want to get it.  And don’t forget the Barq’s root beer in a sippy cup.

            Invented by the Martin Brothers at their coffee stand (no, it wasn’t a Starbucks), in the late twenties during a streetcar worker strike, the po-boy came to life as an inexpensive way to feed the “poor boys” on the picket line.  Years earlier the Martins had themselves worked on the streetcars.  The brothers would throw whatever they had available at the time in between two halves of a loaf of George Leidenheimer’s light as air crusty French bread and feed the hungry streetcar motormen and conductors on the picket line.  Shrimp, oysters, catfish, soft-shell crabs, roast beef and even French fries and ham and cheese covered with lettuce, tomatoes and pickles would feed these “poor boys”.  The coffee stand the Martin Brothers started before the strike grew to a successful restaurant on St Claude Ave by the end of the strike.  Po-boys were the bedrock of the New Orleans diet through the hard times of the Depression years.  A fifteen inch standard po-boy cost ten cents in the thirties.  The brothers split up in the late thirties but both maintained the Martin and Son Poor Boy Bar and Restaurant name in their different locations around the city surviving into the 1970’s.  By that time the po-boy fame had spread far beyond the city of New Orleans.

            Today every self-respecting New Orleanian has their favorite po-boy and favorite place to get it.  An outsider might find it difficult to understand how a po-boy made on the same Leidenheimer’s French bread, dressed with the same tomatoes, lettuce, pickles and mayonnaise, and filled with roast beef, shrimp or oysters can taste different.  But to born and raised New Orleanians, they are as different as night and day.  If you need to kill an afternoon just ask one what the difference is.  They’ll tell you but it’s going to take hours.  New Orleanians don’t answer questions; they tell stories that will cross several generations as well as parish lines.  Should the shrimp be fried or barbecued?  Should the bread come from the Gendusa Bakery or Leidenheimer’s?  Do you put gravy on it or not?  What do you mean dressed or not dressed?  You better open a Dixie and pull up a chair because you aren’t going anywhere for several hours.

            If you don’t have the time to invest in hearing Boudreaux tell you about the po-boys that his father’s mother used to bring him when she would pass by from some long gone po-boy shop, you can just ask me.  I’ll be more than happy to tell you where you can get, without a doubt, the best fried pork chop po-boy, dressed of course, anywhere in New Orleans. 

            When I walk to Guy’s Po-Boys on Magazine Street from my house I walk right past Domilici’s Po-Boys and Bar where there’s always a line coming out the front door and down the sidewalk.  I’ve been there and they make a good po-boy but not as good as Guy’s.  When I walk in Guy’s I’m walking in on family.  Marvin the cook can barely look up from his grill to yell, “Magazine Street Dave.  Where you been at?”  Troy shouts his unique version of my name.  Marvin’s twin sons give me high fives.  I’m in my glory.  I don’t even have to order.  They already know what I want.  And of course I want it dressed.  They know that.  The game is on the funky old TV on top of the soda cooler which is full of Barq’s root beer.  There’s a wall rack next to the cooler full of every kind of Zapp’s chips you can get.  The Formica topped tables hold rolls of paper towels and bottles of Crystal hot sauce.  What else could you need?  Folks shuffle their chairs around until you have a seat.  Everybody sits together at Guy’s.  Rich or poor, black or white, young or old, it doesn’t matter.  We’re family here.  We share the common knowledge of who makes the best po-boys in New Orleans.

            When that fried pork chop po-boy comes over, dressed of course, everybody who isn’t eating is already deep in conversations.  “How’s your Mom and them?  What’s your Daddy doing?  Tell your brother I said to pass by.  What happened with St Aug on Friday night? When are we going fishing?”

          But now it’s time to eat and that requires complete concentration.  Unwrap that baby, put half of it on a paper towel and roll the other half back up.  That’s so it looks like you’re only going to eat half of it and take the other half home for later.  That would be the sensible thing to do but you know it ain’t going to happen.  My entire Saturday has been planned around this po-boy. Anything that had to get done that day is already done. Or as Marvin says, “It got did.”  I carefully shake on the right amount of Crystal hot sauce, take that first bite and sit back with the sun on my back and my friends are all around and laughter is surrounding me and that’s it.  That’s as good as it gets.  

            An hour later I finish that second half off.  I push back my chair and try to breathe.  My eyes are glazed over and the world is perfect.

          I tell everybody I’m heading home.  It comes out as a mumble.  My brain is already starting to numb.  I swagger home, across the street and down the block. I greet my wife at the door. She just rolls her eyes and mutters something about something.  My hearing has already shut down.  My dog is waiting for me and we walk back to the bedroom.  He knows the routine.  After eating one of Marvin’s miracles, my full size fried pork chop po-boy, dressed of course, there is only one thing I can do.  Sleep is calling me and I answer yes.  I turn off the lights.  I turn off my cell phone.  I climb in to bed and fall in to a three hour New Orleans po-boy induced coma.  I’m smiling.  I live in New Orleans. 

Everything else will have to wait.

By Dave Holt

Domilise may have America's best sandwich

Domilise's shrimp poboy to compete in 'Adam Richman's Best Sandwich in America'

 By Dave Walker, The Times-Picayune 

Slapping the “best” label on anything, no less a simple sandwich, is an automatic beef-starter. Adam Richman knew this but opted to undertake his new Travel Channel series, “Adam Richman’s Best Sandwich in America,” anyway. And put his name in the title. The competition, divided by region at first as Richman tours 30 sandwiches in 27 cities, begins at 8 p.m. Wednesday (June 6). New Orleans’ own Domilise’s takes part in the bite-off during a second episode airing at 8:30 p.m.

TravelAdam Richman.

“I remember walking toward the zero hour of launching this thing,” Richman said during a recent phone interview. “I'm really freaking out, knowing I’m really putting my huevos in the pan. ‘All right, I'm going on record saying, “This is the best.”’ It was actually my literary agent, who’s also a very good guy and a super-informed guy about food and the food culture, who said, ‘Adam, at the end of the day, discussion and disagreement and dissent, that's kind of what you want, because that means you've actually activated something that people care about.”

Richman, famous for his sport-eating series “Man v. Food” and “Man v. Food Nation,” said the sandwich derby came about one day when he was spending some time thinking, “What’s next?”

“So many ideas were bandied about that were so content-heavy and could easily collapse under their own weight,” he said. “I remember I was sitting at an airport gate and I was talking to my co-executive producer and I said, ‘We’re overcomplicating things. People trust me to find great places to eat. Let's focus on great sandwiches all around the country. I’ll find the one that's my personal favorite, and along the way I'll experience some other ones. We can showcase this one type of food that is so relatable and so universal that you can't deny what you feel.’

“Simply put, every culture on this planet has a sandwich. Every single one. Gyros, falafel, roti and so on. There are so many different options, and it gave us so much latitude.

“It’s also something that people could genuinely re-create at home, and that people could realistically have a connection to. It's something that mom makes with tomato soup when we don't feel well, and it's something we grab to put in a brown paper bag on our way to school.

“It's so simple and kind of elegant in its simplicity that I had to do it. Everybody loves a sandwich. I didn't want to do anything too heavy, too intense. I love it.”

In Wednesday’s 8:30 p.m. episode, Domilise’s shrimp po boy will compete against two Tampa, Fla., sandwiches, one a Reuben made of grouper. Richman said he was surprised and pleased at the simplicity of the Domilise’s po boy preparation, which is demonstrated in the episode.

“When you find something is done with that degree of simplicity, it's at once both amazing and unnerving,” he said. “You go, ‘Oh my gosh, I thought there was so much more intricacy to this recipe.’

“The inverse is true as well, when you find something and you think you know it and think that it’s straight-ahead and it’s not.”

Domilise’s inclusion comes courtesy of Anthony Bourdain, who nominates the shrimp po boy for the competition in a segment taped in an unidentified men’s room.

Domilise’s was one of the local stops Bourdain made during a 2008 New Orleans episode of “No Reservations,” so his favoring their po boys figures. But why the men’s room?

“We are now just at the tip of the iceberg of the ‘Why did Anthony Bourdain do X?’ question,” Richman said. “I have a lot of respect for him as a colleague and as a writer and a producer, but I’ll be gosh darned if I know how that dude’s brain works.

“Maybe the sound quality was better in a porcelain echo chamber.”

Dave Walker can be reached at dwalker@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3429. Read more TV coverage at NOLA.com/tv. Follow him at twitter.com/davewalkertp.

© 2012 NOLA.com. All rights reserved.

Best po-boy a highly contested topic

Johnny's serves up a delicious roast beef po-boy in the Quarter

 By Brett Anderson, The Times-Picayune 

Of the many camps that form the diverse Nation of Roast Beef Po-boy Connoisseurs, no two would appear to be more at odds than the toasted bread adherents and those who demand their bread as God/Leidenheimer intended/delivered it.

EnlargeDavid Grunfeld, The Times-PicayuneDAVID GRUNFELD / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE Johnny's roast beef po-boy at 511 St. Louis Street, New Orleans Monday December 26, 2011. $13,500 doesn’t sound like a lot of money today. But on June 30th, 1950 it was enough to buy the building at 511 St. Louis St. in New Orleans by Johnny and Betty De Grusha.Johnny's roast beef po-boy gallery (14 photos)

The battle lines were drawn in the comments section of a po-boy dispatch published this month on NOLA.com. “Toasted bread? It’s not a po-boy,” wrote “royrogers,” although he loosened the grip on that staunch position in a later post.

Another commenter, “slophry,” stuck harder to his/her guns, arguing that “toasted French bread is going to act different than non-toasted French bread,” particularly in the way it reacts to “the gravy and juices … I prefer a soft French bread over a crispy French bread especially for the roast beef. I love it when the bread gets soaked in the gravy. Point being that toasting the bread will result in a different experience over non-toasted bread.”

Slophry essentially makes an argument opposite to those proffered by members of the camp where I pitch my tent — a place that, thanks to the comparative resilience of toasted bread, requires a fraction of the number of napkins as its rival. In a nutshell, toasted bread fans like a sandwich that stands a chance of holding its shape to the last bite. For untoasted fans, sloppiness is pretty much the point of a roast beef po-boy.

JOHNNY'S PO-BOYS

• Where it's at: 511 St. Louis St., New Orleans, 504.524.8129
• Claim to fame: Johnny’s is a living link to the French Quarter’s blue collar past, a raucous breakfast-lunch hall that dates to the Truman administration.
• Brett Anderson’s take: Johnny’s roast beef po-boy is Switzerland in a form of a shape-shifting sandwich: the po-boy adherents of both toasted and untoasted French bread can agree on.
• The search for the perfect roast beef po-boy: See the full list of restaurants reviewed on our-five-month taste test.

All of which brings us to Johnny’s Po-Boys, the raucous, 60-some year-old breakfast-and-lunch hall. If there’s a better po-boy shop in the French Quarter, I haven’t been to it.

Johnny’s roast beef po-boys are, according to general manager (and grandson-in-law of founder Johnny De Grusha) Mike Cancienne, built from meat slow-boiled with garlic, black pepper, onions, bell pepper and celery, “kind of like you do with your crawfish or your crabs, so it takes on all that flavor.”

After it’s done, the beef is left to soak in a pot of gravy in the open kitchen behind the counter, waiting to be plucked by tongs. It’s delicious.

Johnny’s kitchen staff will gladly griddle-toast the Leidenheimer bread for your roast beef po-boy if you ask, but people who don’t specify receive their sandwich on untoasted loaves, which is how I tried mine. Shake your head no when asked whether your order is to go. It means your sandwich will be served on a plate, not steaming inside a cocoon of butcher paper.

The first half is a reminder that fresh po-boy bread can be crisp-skinned and sturdy, even untoasted. Because it has had longer to soak up the gravy, the second half comes closer to slophry’s messy ideal. The sum total is the best of both worlds, Switzerland in the shape-shifting form of a roast beef po-boy, a sandwich two opposing camps in the N.R.B.P.C. should be able to agree on.

© 2011 NOLA.com. All rights reserved.

Salvaged wood makes earthy art

My college friend Ellen, who now lives in Houston, insisted I track down a local artist at the Po-Boy Preservation Festival.

There were probably a half-million people on Oak Street in the Carrollton neighborhood on Sunday afternoon with long lines waiting to order Bourbon BBQ shrimp, pulled pork, smoked portobello, garlic shrimp, shrimp remoulade and pork debris po-boys, among other variations. Judging from the size of the crowd, I don't think the po-boy is in any danger of extinction, at least not in New Orleans.

I noticed by 4 o'clock, the hot sausage was already sold out, so that must have been awfully tasty. For those who may not know, a po-boy is like a Subway sandwich, but not. Calories be damned! They're all "dressed," which means lots of sloppy toppings and drippy sauce.

Leidenheimer Baking Co. - "Good to the Last Crumb" - is famous for its po-boy bread, which it has made since 1896. According to Leidenheimer's Web site, the name po-boy originated during a streetcar conductors' strike in the 1920s when a sandwich shop near the French Market fed conductors for free, shouting "Here comes another po-boy," when a striking conductor entered the shop.

I finally located the Artists' Village across from Jacques-Imo's Cafe and found Barbara Roberds right away. I'd already bought a small item from her myself at the Arts Market. Ellen wanted a wooden street sign for a Christmas gift. Barbara makes stuff from old wood - door and window frames - and also photographs old buildings. I decided to go ahead and buy a light switchplate I'd previously admired that features the Saturn Bar (see Nov. 6 posting about hip bars), which suits my decor a little better than the Ramos Pinto dancing girls I've got on the living room wall now.

New Orleans' original street names are spelled out in blue lettered tile embedded in the sidewalk.