Po'boy.

For the benefit of non-New Orleanians, a 'po'boy' is a sandwich. It takes it's name from an early 20th century streetcar strike, when merchants sympathetic to the strikers offered jumbo sandwiches that were good for a whole meal for only a nickel. The "poor boys" up against the Company could afford that. Most days I ride my bicycle past one of my favorite po'boy places on my way to and from Tulane. It's called the Parkway Bakery and Tavern, and most days I ride right on by, even though this is not easy. The smells wafting out of that place make it awfully tempting. The Parkway has been around, in one incarnation or another, since the 1920s. Back then it was the favored lunch spot for workers at the American Can Company, directly across Bayou St. John. In the 1960s, my friend and colleague John Joyce Jr. would occasionally sub for Pete Fountain's regular drummer, and Pete was tight with the owners of the Parkway, which in those days made it's own french bread. It was Pete's routine to stop in, band members in tow, at the Parkway after the gig, at about four o'clock in the morning, when the bakers were pulling the day's fresh bread out of the oven. John tells me of ordering a roast beef sandwhich and being asked "ya want extra gravy on 'at?" and watching a baker run the sandwich under a faucet sticking out of a large tank by the door. It took him a second to realize that the establishment enjoyed "gravy on tap." (Incidentally, to this day, many of these joints offer "debris gravy," gravy into which all the "debris," the bits of scorched and blackened meat on the grill, has been scraped. I know some of you are thinking "eek! Carcinogens!" Those who know are thinking "delicious!") John also tells me the bakers would fire the completed sandwich, wrapped in butcher paper, out a servers window behind the bar, where the bartender would catch it, football style, before handing it off to the customer. The Parkway suffered catastrophic flooding in the early 70s and sat vacant and ruined for years. The American Can Company went out of business, and eventually the building was converted to condos and rental apartments. Then a few years back current owner Jay Nix bought the place and re-opened it. After Katrina, when the neighborhood around it was mostly empty and in ruins, the place would still be packed on weekends with people taking a break from repairing their houses and arguing with their insurance agents. The place used to have music on saturday afternoons, which was really cool. Lots of toddlers dancing to the Hot 8 Brass Band in the parking lot. Last wednesday I was grinding my way home on my bike and started feeling weak and dizzy. New Orleans has no hills to speak of, so the five mile (each way) bike ride to Tulane and back never gets to be a particularly athletic affair, but it is getting damn hot out there these days and I was feeling dehydrated. I decided I was suffering from po'boy anemia. I pull in, rack my bike and go inside to the order window. Nobody there. I pull a Barq's root beer out of the cooler, pop it open on the bottle opener mounted on the counter, and drain it in four swallows, so great is my thirst. Plunk the empty on the bar, still no one around. I lean over the counter and look down, and there's Lakeesha, the counter girl, crouched down on the floor, looking back up at me. "Keesha!" "Johnaaaaaaye!" (Keesha always manages to make my name sound slightly naughty). "Are you hiding down there Keesha?" I ask. "No Johnny, I surely ain't," she teases. I have no idea what she was actually doing down there, and I don't care, I'm so hungry. "What I can get you you ain't already got?" "Gimme a large shrimp sandwich, dressed," I tell her. "Dressed" means with mayonaisse, pickles, lettuce and tomato. "I was riding by and the smell just pulled me in here." She smiles. "Oh I feel ya. When that shrimp drops and that smell comes out, baby I work here and I never get tired of that smell." Po'boy fillings vary, you can have roast beef, shrimp, hot sausage, fried oysters, all kinds of things, but the basic construction of the sandwich is always the same. You take a loaf of french bread, cut it in half through the midde, then slice each half lengthwise, and put the filling in there. Most places, they give it to you wrapped in butcher paper. And it has to be 'real' french bread, cooked in a hot, brick oven so the crust is hard but the inside is fluffy. There used to be all kinds of bakeries in New Orleans that did this, but pretty much the only one that still does it is Leidenheimer's. The Parkway uses Leidenheimer's bread, exclusively. I got Keesha to throw in a couple sides of sweet potato fries, took the sandwich home to my wife, and we split it. It was enough for dinner. Seriously.