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.