Gastronomette in the City

Mmmm... Po Boys.....

I made the mistake of reading Are You Going to Eat That? by Robb Walsh on my cross town commuter ride, having suffered the indignity of mall lunches yet again. (When will I learn the only way to eat real food is to brown bag it?) In it was a lively little article on creole and cajan cooking, and more specificly, Mr. Walsh was singing the praises of an Oyster Po Boy.

For the uninitated, a po boy is a sandwich. Usually served on skinny french bread, the sub-like concoction can be filled with just about everything under the sun, like deli meats, or more delectably, fried seafood or just oysters. Into the sandwhich goes the uninspiring lettuce and tomato and maybe mayo, and the whole thing is consumed with a copious amount of hotsauce. The old wives tales goes that this is what husbands bought their jaded wives to try to get her back into their good books.

My own experience with Po Boys stared in New Orleans, when one of my best friends, Bill, and I went down there for one last spring harrah before we graduated from Emerson. N'awlin' is a wild, crazy city fill of history and Voodoo, but more importantly, incredible, heart-stoppingly good food. (Both figuritively and very literally.)I have made it a point I will almost do anything to eat my way through the city, and Bill obligingly came along.(more of my culinary adventures in New Orleans later: I can't part with ALL my good stories on day two of blogging!)

On what must have been day two, we followed a tour book to Mike's, a hole-in-the-wall Po Boy joint in the French Quater. We walked in, looked at the menu and knew immediately we were over our heads. There was about 30 or 40 different types of po boys listed. Bill and I looked at eat other, gulped and...

"What Cho' two want?"

"Um... I'll have the... err... fried seafood..."

"Dressed? "

"Huh??"

"I said Dressed. YOu know..Lettuce, 'matos, Mayo?"

"Err... Sure..."

That was me anyway. I can't remember what Bill Ordered.

What arrived eventually was nothing short of a miracle on a plate. A massive italian loaf filled with freshly fried seafood... My mind went blank as I absorbed the heavenilness of all this. There was the greaseless, crunchy shrimps and tender scallops and the requsite oysters, still creamy within...

We finsihed our sandwiches, much to our own surprise. And I fell in love with the food of new Orleans. We Went back three days later, on our last day, to yet again

More adventures later.If anyone knows where I can get a decent po boy in Toronto let me know....

posted by Kelly @ 5:56 p.m.