When is a po-boy not a po-boy? When you’d have to shop at Whole Foods to find its ingredients, when you can eat one and still exercise later that day and when it costs more than a six pack of microbrew beer.
I appreciate what imaginative cooks and sandwich makers are doing with the French bread sandwich in New Orleans, filling it with everything from grilled chicken Caesar salad to paneed rabbit, but maybe it’s time to find another name for these creations. A po-boy worthy of the name and rich heritage it connotes needs to be big, it needs to be sloppy bordering on gross and, most importantly, it needs to be cheap. In other words, it should appeal to the deprived appetite, unfussy aesthetics and hardscrabble finances of a poor boy.
Happily, it’s not hard to find po-boys that have stayed true to their roots. Corner groceries, meat markets and even gas stations in the city’s downtrodden areas proudly lay claim to serving “over-stuffed po-boys” and even “the biggest po-boys in town.” Push open some of their burglar bar-protected doors and you’ll find it’s not always hype. From the humblest of sandwich boards I’ve lately pulled gargantuan specimens that also range in quality from acceptable to remarkable.
Hands down, the best po-boy for your money is found at Banks Street Meat Market, at the corner of Banks and Broad streets and not far from the criminal court building. You order from a meat counter groaning with turkey necks, pig feet, pig tails, gravy steaks, drumsticks and stew meat. The prices and available sizes are listed right there—next to packed meat specials with names like “The Poor Man Special” and “The Mother of All Specials”—but you can’t really appreciate the size and value of these po-boys until the always grim counterman hauls one into view and wraps it in square yards of butcher paper.
They make 32-inch po-boys here—basically, the entire French bread loaf—and cram it full of meat or fried seafood. The prices start out at $4.50 for just dressed cheese and top out at $11.99 for oysters. The roast beef is $7.99. That’s 25 cents per linear inch, and every inch is so fully stuffed with meat and gravy that it can be uncomfortable to fit your mouth around it all. The po-boy can be split between three big appetites and satisfy them all or feed one person for a day and a half.
Because of their size, you need to hold these po-boys just right: grip one at the center and the ends bend, while if you space a two-handed grip too far apart, the center sags. This po-boy needs to be cradled, using the entire forearm to properly support its improbable length. An elderly woman leaving the store with one looked like she was toting lumber. Gangsters could conceal shotguns within them. Get two, let the bread go stale, and you could water ski on them. People, these sandwiches are big.
To a certain extent, the quality suffers for the prices. The meat is far from choice cuts and indeed there are three different gradations of ham on the menu, from the dubious ham roll to the more expensive but more comfortingly recognizable “VIP ham.” But it’s all at least decent and some choices much better than others. The smoked sausage po-boy has ropes and ropes of DD brand sausage, for instance, which is much better than the hot sausage patties.
The quality of the seafood po-boys surprised me. It’s usually good advice to order the most basic po-boys when they’re priced this low, but both the oysters and shrimp were flavorful, meaty and fried in a batter with a little kick to it. The 32-inch shrimp po-boy had perhaps 60 shrimp curled within its length, while the oyster po-boy had at least three dozen large, soft bivalves. I’d avoid the catfish however, which is flavorless—a frightening prospect for catfish.
They serve smaller sizes, including bun sandwiches which are ample by any standard and cost not much more than bus fare.
There are other meat markets out there serving po-boys on the entire loaf, but I can’t conceive of a larger one, one more fully packed with meat or one that’s a better value. The owners of Banks Street also operate the Louisiana Super Saver meat market on Louisiana Avenue just off St. Charles Avenue, and while they don’t serve the 32-incher, the smaller and lower priced sandwiches are similar values.
Granted, a 32-inch po-boy is a little much for most people, even if they’re sharing. But values abound if you’re willing to poke around and Broad Street itself proves a veritable miracle mile for po-boys worthy of the name. The newly opened Ideal Discount Meat Market seems to have taken a page from the Banks Street Market’s book, which is located only a block away on Broad Street. Here again are the giant, freezer-filling packed meat deals and again thriftful po-boys are listed along side. They sell the normal-sized, 12-inch po-boy, with the gratifyingly sloppy hot roast beef perhaps the best and the seafood po-boys better left alone. Prices are slightly up-market, usually $4 for a 12-incher, but Ideal throws in a free can of Big Shot soda with the purchase, so you’re total bill is low.
You can find human-scaled po-boys at low prices in almost any New Orleans neighborhood, you just have to be willing to put up with less than splendid surroundings while they’re being prepared. Magnolia Discount is a good example of the typical downtrodden po-boy counter that is short on charm but long on value. This is a BP gas station at the corner of Broad Street and Esplanade Avenue, and amid dusty canned goods and noisy beer coolers is a deli case serving a half dozen different po-boys, including the usual cold cuts, sausages and hamburgers. At $3 for a 12-incher, these too come out at about 25 cents per inch, which makes up for whatever the atmosphere is lacking. Anytime I can get a big cheeseburger with two patties, dressed, on French bread plus a 16-ounce Red Dog beer and spend less than $4, I’m happy. Adding to the experience on one visit was the counterman’s suggestion that I tip him to “super size” the cheeseburger po-boy. I did, and was rewarded with a third patty in the now over-stuffed loaf.
Without this addition, the po-boys here probably can’t qualify as being over-stuffed but they are certainly ample enough and the size makes them easy to eat on the run. I recently put away a roast beef po-boy from Magnolia while driving across the Crescent City Connection and found the chewy French bread held everything together nicely.
And while nothing else I’ve encountered can really come close to Banks Street’s leviathans with mayo, these humble $3 po-boys are big enough for a one-sitting meal. Case in point: when I left the truck for a moment to run into a store, my yellow Labrador riding shotgun took the opportunity to wolf down half of the Magnolia roast beef po-boy, yet I still felt like I had gotten my money’s worth from it.
