Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published January 23, 2006 Click here for the current edition The Return Of The Roast Beef Poor Boy Eating in New Orleans would not be complete without poor boy sandwiches. Many hands have been wrung over whether the restaurants specializing in poor boys will survive, especially since so many of them were on the corner of a back streets and another back street, with a disproportionate number of them in the five-feet-deep part of Mid-City. However, the fact that Liuzza's and Mandina's and Katie's and Weaver's are not back yet doesn't mean that you can't get a decent sandwich out there. Many poor boy places have returned, from the great to the terrible. We'll leave the latter alone and look at some of the good ones, in no particular order. Mother's (401 Poydras, 523-9656) was the first major poor boy maker to return from the storm. Many of us were worried about it, because TV pictures during the worst part of the post-storm chaos showed a building on fire around there. As it turned out, that was down the street. Mother's was hit by looters, who did very little damage, as it turned out. It didn't take long for Jerry Amato and his crew to get Mother's back to exactly where it had been before the storm. I've been there a couple of times, trying dishes from the ham and roast beef poor boys to the gumbo, red beans and fried seafood, and if there's a difference from the old days (and I mean the really old days, when the Landry brothers ran it), it got past me. I was especially interested in how the ham would be, since the company that custom-cures them for Mother's--Chisesi--was shut down until late November. But even that tastes right. And it better, since that's the specialty. Like many old standbys whose popularity with tourists drove locals away, Mother's is wide open and accessible, without the ridiculous lines it had before the storm. (Still busy, though.) The fact that they serve breakfast--a hard meal to come by, still--is worth remembering. They make it all from scratch. Johnny's Po-Boys (511 St. Louis, 524-8129) has the best poor boys in the French Quarter, I think. I say that almost entirely on the merit of their roast beef, which to my palate has the classic flavor that recalls the old neighborhood bars where poor boys were always at their best. The sandwiches are absurdly large--it's been many years since I could finish one of them comfortably. And the list of possible sandwiches is among the longest in town, employing some cold cuts I'll bet you haven't thought about in more than a few years. The place is a little grubby, but that's authentic. They've been open for a couple of months now. Liuzza's By The Track (1518 N. Lopez, 943-8667) opened right after the first of the year, to the rejoicing of its many fans. Believe this: they are not captured by the look of the place, which is that of a bar, and an uncomfortable, worn-out bar at that. However, the food is more than good enough to make this an essential stop on a poor boy survey. The roast beef is utterly without flaw. The gravy has a deep, peppery flavor, the bread is crisply fresh, the beef sliced the ideal thinness. A variation of this sandwich, dressed with a horseradish-spiked mayonnaise, is a powerful contender for Best Poor Boy In Town. They also do excellent oyster and shrimp loaves, the seafood fried to order. The track is still closed, but this Liuzza's (not connected with Liuzza's on Bienville, which hasn't yet reopened) is doing it again. Parasol's (2533 Constance, 899-2054) was one of the most revered of poor boy joints until the 1990s, when it became inconsistent, closed, opened, closed, opened, and confused everybody. Since reopening after the storm, it has once again taken its place as a first-class vendor of roast beef poor boys. The gravy is exceptionally fine. Another old tradition is back: it takes a few minutes for the sandwiches, which are made to order, to emerge from the kitchen. Don't come here in a big hurry. It's one of the better people-watching places. (And, in a couple of moths, it's the center for all St. Patrick's Day activities in the Irish Channel.) Like at Johnnie's, the range of Parasol's sandwich fillings is vast. Crabby Jack's (428 Jefferson Hwy., 833-2722) is largely the commissary for Jacques-Imo's, which doesn't have enough kitchen space for the volume of food it puts out through its incredibly busy restaurant on Oak Street. This place, on Jefferson Highway between the two sets of railroad tracks, also functions as a poor boy place. It has fine versions of all the standards, but the most distinctive is the smothered duck poor boy. Think about this: slow-cooked duck meat shredded up and put on a poor boy with a brown duck gravy. It's certainly in the same part of the texture universe as a roast beef poor boy is, but with a very different flavor. Crabby Jack's is mostly take-out, probably a good thing, because the level of hospitality here is. . . well, sub-optimal. A sign tells you to behave or else. But put up with the attitude, get ready to wait a few minutes (here's another place that does it all to order), and enjoy the food. Mike Serio's Deli (133 St. Charles Ave., 523-2668) dates back to the days when there were so many clerical people who worked in the buildings of the CBD that they needed a line of ladies to take and make the sandwich orders for a much longer line of supplicants. So many sandwiches flew out of this place that the bread, meats, cheeses, and dressings were always very fresh, even though fine points like warming the sandwich (the single greatest improvement one can make in a poor boy) were overlooked. The result was that if you wanted just a basic ham poor boy, you got a good one here, and they did all the other ones well, too. The place is much calmer these days, but the last poor boy I had here was more than good enough to satisfy. R&O's (216 Old Hammond Hwy., 831-1248) has a very appealing formula: they serve enormous portions of seafood and well-stuffed poor boy sandwiches for prices a shade below the standard. Several aspects of the sandwiches here are unique. First, they use an interesting seeded bread loaf that's as much like an Italian bread as a standard New Orleans French bread. The Italian special (meatballs and Italian sausage with red sauce and mozzarella) is as delicious as it is original. The roast beef, ham, and seafood poor boys are also well made, and sent out toasty warm. Given that all of West End was destroyed just a few blocks away, it's amazing--and encouraging--that R&O's came back quickly. © 2006 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com