PO’ BOY

In the Delaware Valley, a distinction tends to be made between the sub, which is hot, and the hoagie, which is cold. A Louisiana po’ boy can be either. In the extended American family of overstuffed sandwiches on lengths of horizontal-sliced bread, the po’ boy probably boasts the most diverse variations. It can be roast beef or catfish, a cheeseburger or peppered wiener, ham and cheese or fried oysters and gravy debris. When ordering a po’ boy of any configuration, the eater will be asked if he wants it dressed. That adds lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, and, usually, pickles. Variants made with sausage pose another question: Regular mustard or Creole mustard?

Aside from a plethora of great ingredients, the po’ boy’s distinguishing feature is the bread on which it’s made—about one-third lighter than a typical Northeast sub loaf, and with a crisp elegant crust. A large majority of New Orleans po’ boy makers use loaves from Leidenheimer Bakery, which has been around since the late nineteenth century. An Acadian variation of the po’ boy is sometimes called a pirogue, named after the shallow-bottom bayou canoe, and an obsolete nickname is la mediatrice, meaning “peace-maker,” supposedly because it was the favorite sandwich for a wayward husband to bring back in an attempt to appease his wife. One account says the sandwich originated when it was offered by a French Quarter restaurateur to streetcar workers (“poor boys”) during a 1929 strike. Another story is that the original po’ boys were simply lengths of bread sopped with gravy, hence affordable by poor boys. Some po’ boy shops still offer very inexpensive sandwiches of nothing but gravy and debris, lending some credence to the latter explanation.

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New Orleaneans are wild for po’ boys made of roast beef with lots of gravy.