Parkway Poor Boys
Mid-City: 538 Hagan Ave. 504-482-3047. Map.
Very Casual.
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Website
ANECDOTES AND ANALYSIS
The argument as to which joint makes the best poor boys in New Orleans was already in progress when the first crusty sandwiches began appearing in the 1930s. It will never end. But except for the complaints wielded by people who can’t stand waiting for the sandwich to be made, this vendor will always be near the front of the pack, and its works exemplify what a poor boy sandwich is about.
WHY IT’S NOTEWORTHY
A novelist depicting an imaginary poor boy shop would come up with a place a lot like the Parkway. It’s on the corner of two back streets in a historic neighborhood, a half-block off a bayou. The premises are well worn, and covered with New Orleans set pieces. Your grandfather may have had a poor boy at the Parkway. You never know who you’ll run into there. Could be the mayor, could be an unemployee. Your sandwich will ever be memorable in its flavor, generous size, and inexpensiveness.
WHAT’S GOOD
The Parkway Bakery cooks everything on the premises. (Except, ironically, its bread.) That’s less common than one might suppose, so easy and tempting is it to buy meats and gravy ready to serve. The quality of the ingredients and the recipes are good, too–and they’re always tweaking both, to get a little more flavor. The Parkway is also unusual in inventing new poor boys constantly. The turkey, dressing, gravy, and cranberry sauce poor boy, for example, was such a hit one Thanksgiving that it turns up now and then.
BACKSTORY
The original restaurant opened in the early 1920s, predating the invention of the poor boy sandwich by a few years. It was indeed a bakery then, baking French bread until sometime in the 1960s. By that time the sandwiches had become the main enterprise, and were so good that their reputation long outlived the old place, which chugged along for a couple of decades before it closed in the 1990s. In 2003 Jay Nix–who was in the construction business at the time–rebuilt the Parkway. He had a good enough idea of what a poor boy shop should be that he made the Parkway great again.
DINING ROOM
You enter from a paved yard with picnic tables, pass through the line to put your order in (there will probably be quite a few people ahead of you), then find a place to wait. The best place–if you can find an open spot–is the bar. Bars are historically where the best poor boys were served, and this one has The Feel. (The tall wooden bar itself looks ancient, but Jay Nix built it himself.) Then you sit and wait to hear your name screamed.
Roast beef poor boy, the centerpiece of Parkway’s cooking.
BEST DISHES
Louisiana Seafood Poor Boys
»Fried oysters (Mondays & Wednesdays only)
Fried shrimp
»Fried wild-caught catfish
»»Roast Beef Poor Boys
House-cooked, hot slow-roasted beef with brown gravy
Parkway surf and turf (roast beef, fried shrimp, brown gravy)
1929 potato or sweet potato fried golden brown and covered with roast beef gravy.
House-cooked roast beef barbecue, Kansas City-style sauce
More Sandwiches
Charbroiled hamburger
»House-cooked daily turkey breast (grilled or cold)
Smoked alligator sausage
Italian meatballs with marinara
»Steamed Vienna Beef corned beef
Golden grilled cheese (grilled or cold)
Nathan’s Famous all beef hot dog
»Smoked hot sausage pork link
»Smoked hot sausage beef patty
Grilled Italian sausage link
Sides
Sweet potato fries, with cheese, chili, or gravy.
»French fries
»Fried pickles
Coleslaw
»Homemade chili
Turkey gumbo
Homemade potato salad
Grilled boneless chicken breasts
Classic grilled reuben on rye
Premium smoke-pit ham (grilled or cold)
»Vegetarian: Italian Caprese (sliced tomatoes and mozzarella, extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, fresh basil
Desserts
»Classic bread pudding
Fresh banana pudding
Butter rum cake
»Poor-boy ice cream sandwich
Chocolate chip cookies
Chocolate chip chocolate brownie
FOR BEST RESULTS
This is not fast food. They make every sandwich to order and it takes a few minutes. Although they sell a lot of take-out, it’s better eaten on the nostalgic premises. Try to remember that they’re closed of Tuesdays.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
If they consistently toasted the French bread, the sandwiches would be even better. Nobody has yet advanced a credible explanation why fried oyster poor boys are only available on Mondays and Wednesdays.
FACTORS OTHER THAN FOOD
Up to three points, positive or negative, for these characteristics. Absence of points denotes average performance in the matter.
Dining Environment +2
Consistency +2
Service-1
Value +2
Attitude +2
Wine & Bar
Hipness +1
Local Color +3
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Outdoor tables, drinks only
Open Sunday lunch
Open Monday lunch
Open all afternoon
Historic
Unusually large servings
Quick, good meal
Good for children
Easy, nearby parking
No reservations
Oysters Tchoupitoulas
This was a specialty of the old Tchoupitoulas Plantation restaurant that operated in Avondale from the 1950s into the 1980s. By the time I got there, it was more of an atmospheric experience than a gustatory one. But this dish remained reasonably good, if not one of the great oyster dishes of all time. The bivalves were cooked (overcooked, I thought) in a very dark sauce flavored with Worcestershire and steak sauce. Roy Guste Jr. published what I think was the actual recipe in his book, “100 Best New Orleans Restaurant Recipes.” I fooled around with it a little and came up with this. It’s good served as is, but it’s superb tossed with angel hair pasta.
4 dozen freshly-shucked oysters, with their liquor
2 cups chicken stock
1/3 cup flour
1 stick butter
4 green onions, tender green parts only, thinly sliced
2 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup Tabasco Caribbean-style steak sauce (or Pickapeppa sauce)
1/4 cup dry red wine (Chianti would be my choice)
1 Tbs. lemon juice
1/2 tsp. salt
1. Drain the oysters in a sieve and collect all the oyster liquor. Pour the oyster liquor plus enough chicken stock to make three cups of liquid total into a saucepan. Bring it to a boil and lower to a simmer.
2. Combine the butter and flour in another, large saucepan and make a medium dark roux, stirring constantly. When the roux is the right color, remove the pan from the heat and add the green onions, stirring until they become soft–about a minute.
3. Add about a half-cup of the oyster water-stock mixture to the roux and stir lightly until just combines–about five seconds. Add the wine, Worcestershire, steak sauce, and lemon juice. Return to a simmer over low heat.
4. When you see the first bubbles return, add the remaining stock to the roux mixture and stir with a wire whisk until uniformly blended. Cook for about ten minutes, or until the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Add salt and pepper to taste. The sauce is now complete. You may do it ahead up until this point and hold it (refrigerated if it will be longer than an hour) until serving time.
5. When it’s time to serve, bring the sauce to a simmer and add the oysters. With a big spoon, stir them into the sauce to avoid breaking them. Bring the sauce back to a simmer and cook until the oysters are curly at the edges.
Serve the oysters over slices of toast or in a small ramekin, topped with chopped parsley.
Serves eight appetizers or four entrees.
Orange Flavor Catfish @ Royal China
Small but with a big menu, the Royal China is among the five or so oldest Chinese restaurants in New Orleans, and best known for its dim sum (you order from a book, not a cart). But its regular menu is shot through with great standard Chinese dishes, and variants. The orange-flavor sauce is spicy and most often used with beef. But it’s very good on catfish. It’s the oils in the peel that make the distinctive taste. You’ll find little pieces of the peel mixed up in the sweet heat.
The chicken version of Royal China’s catfish with orange sauce. It also can be made with beef. All are spicy and sweet. And good.
Royal China. Metairie: 600 Veterans Blvd. 504-831-9633.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
January 4, 2016
Days Until. . .
Carnival Begins5.
Mardi Gras 56.
Tenth Day of Christmas
Here come the leaping lords. I don’t know what that’s all about, and I don’t think I want to know. Also silly: the chromium combination manicure, scissors and cigarette lighter in Allan Sherman’s version of the song. In another: mistletoe arrives today, too late for the parties. Benny Grunch goes to the Tenneco Chalmette Refinery for some reason. In our own take on the Twelve Days song, today we’d like to simmer for you ten cups of red beans to go with the nine cups of rice and eight links of sausage from the last two days.
Today’s Flavor
This is National Spaghetti Day. As much as I love pasta, whenever I encounter spaghetti in the strictest sense of the word, I’m glad that we don’t eat it often. The thinner string pastas–spaghettini, vermicelli, angel hair–have taken over. Thicker spaghetti doesn’t roll up onto a fork, or hold as much sauce. This is because, ounce for ounce, the thinner the pasta, the more surface area it has.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
Breaking spaghetti to fit into a storage jar is carrying organization a little too far.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Mallow is a suburb of the city of Covington, in the Allegany Mountains in northwest Virginia. It’s fifty-three miles north of Roanoke, and about twelve miles from the West Virginia state line. Mallow is located on what has been for centuries one of the main east-west routes through the Appalachians, on both US 60 and I-64. A lot of people stop there for a bite to eat. I recommend the Mountain View Restaurant. A mallow, by the way, is one of many flowering plants whose most famous member–the marsh mallow–used to flavor the confection that bears its name. But mallow products are only rarely found in marshmallows anymore.
Food In Show Biz
The movie Chocolat, about a new-in-town single mother who works her way into the hearts of her neighbors in a small French town by making excellent chocolate pastries premiered today in 2001.
It’s also the birthday of fictional chocolate magnate Willy Wonka–as a trademark for the line of candy bearing the character’s name. Issued today in 1972.
Food On The Air
Today was the premiere, in 1932, of the Carnation Contented Hour, a music variety show on radio sponsored by Carnation Evaporated Milk, the milk from contented cows. Would you prefer milk from a contented cow or a singing cow? I have one of the Carnation shows in my collection; I wish I had more. Good music back then.
Sounds Like A Food Story, But Isn’t
Today in 2006, the first female Beefeater was confirmed. Best known for gracing the label of the bottle of the namesake gin, the Beefeaters–more properly known as Yeoman Warders–have been guarding the Tower of London for over five hundred years. All of them were men until then. But it’s not the rough-and-tumble job it once was. Beefeaters now mainly entertain visitors to the Tower.
Edible Dictionary
feijoada, [feh-ZHWAH-dah], Portuguese, n–Feijoada is to Portugal and Brazil what red beans and rice with sausage is to New Orleans. Different flavor, though. It’s made with black beans, usually–although there are regional variations. The meat component is beef, pork or both, again in a host of different forms, depending on where the recipe comes from. Rice is almost always part of the dish. In some areas of Brazil–where it’s considered the national dish–greens work their way in between the beans and meat. It’s a vary hearty concoction, which seems strange given the tropical climate of Brazil. But then we eat red beans here.
Food Namesakes
J. Danforth Quayle, the vise-prisedint under George Bush I, was borne tooday in 1947. . . Arthur Berry, an early British Olympic soccer star, was born today in 1888. . . Wilhelm Beer, an astronomer who drew the first known map of the moon based on telescopic observations, was born today in 1797. . . Jon Appleton, an American classical composer, was born today in 1939.
Words To Eat By
“No man is lonely while eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention.”–Christopher Morley.
“Nothing spoils lunch any quicker than a rogue meatball rampaging through your spaghetti.”–Jim Davis, author of the comic strip “Garfield.”
“Eating food with a knife and fork is like making love through an interpreter.”–Anonymous.
Words To Drink By
“We live in stirring times—tea-stirring times.”
Making It Hard For A Restaurant To Serve You Well, #583583
I have been telling you to avoid situations like this for many years.
Click here for the cartoon.