We've got you covered with simple shrimp po'boys, catfish po'boys, fried chicken liver po'boys, and more. It read in part, "Do you think Emeril got where he is today by begging customers not to tell anyone how to find his place?
New Orleans, the letter writer asserted, is a city fiercely proud of its culture and cuisine, and Bragg was certainly aware. Spotting children playing yard trampoline on some discarded mattresses on his way to his friend's car, he noted, "Everybody, it seems, has a favorite spot.
This just happens to be his. Getting a po'boy means more than a sandwich. It means fried shrimp and oysters and Zapp's Hotter 'N Hot potato chips, and a dark Barq's root beer, or a cold, golden Abita if you are not a Baptist, and that is as close to turning a flip on a raggedy mattress as an old man is going to get. A po'boy is, as he said, more than a sandwich, but what is the thing that transmogrifies a po'boy from tasty sandwich into a New Orleans icon? Reed went on to extol the virtues of a rabbit and Creole mustard po'boy she'd enjoyed at Crabby Jack's.
It remains open to this day, and the current menu touts versions made with fried green tomatoes and shrimp remoulade , as well as slow roasted duck or cochon de lait. These ingredients are, by anyone's reckoning, not seafood. Though oysters, shrimp, catfish, soft-shell crabs, and the like are frequently found on po'boy menus, you're just as likely to see roast beef sometimes in the form of cooked-down and saucy "debris" , fried chicken, alligator, deli meat, tofu, vegetables, or whatever you fancy.
That po'boy will frequently arrive hot. What makes it a po'boy rather than just a run-of-the-mill sandwich a person could slap together anywhere on the planet is that aforementioned deployment of airy, flaky-crusted French bread, sliced first in half lengthwise, then split into top and bottom, sometimes leaving a little bit unsliced to act as a hinge.
