A recent New York Times article starts off friendly enough, highlighting one of New Orleans’ celebrated dishes, the po’boy and the fairly new Po’boy Festival, but turns rather ominous as reporter John T. Edge contemplates a post-apocalyptic New Orleans in which we might see the demise of the city’s beloved sandwich.
Using the Uptown festival that honors the po’boy, Edge worries, “If a sandwich needs a street festival, for which press coverage has been curried and stale bread weaponized, then that sandwich might be imperiled.” Who knew?
Just what is killing our po’boy, you ask?
“Po’ boy preservationists recognize a range of culprits, inside and outside the city limits. A creeping monoculture is the most frequently cited threat, exemplified by chains like Subway and Quiznos, which are making inroads south of I-10,” the Times reporter forebodes.
Clichés abound for the sacred po’boy as dark clouds appeared over the Gulf of Mexico in August of 2005: “Then came the levee failures and the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina. Bakeries and po’ boy shops struggled mightily to get back in business,” writes Edge.
Not only is the po’boy losing to the tortured landscape that is becoming dominated by homogenized food and culture, which is invading the I-10, they lack in other areas as well.
To quantify this, Edge goes to Leidenheimer’s owner Katherine Whann. Whann’s loaves of French bread dominate local po’boy shops around town as the critical element -- the altar, if you will -- to place those holiest ingredients: soft-shelled crabs and the like.
Whann lamented to Edge that most po’boy shops don’t have parking, don’t have advertising and most importantly, she says, “They don’t have Jared” -- the man whose monumental weight loss put Subway on the map.
Gasp!
Faced with these humungous obstacles, it only gets worse, Edge notes.
“A problem that’s more difficult -- possibly reflecting a drop in expectations set by fast-food purveyors -- is that the quality of some po’ boy shops has declined.” Feeling the pinch from burger makers like McDonald’s, which has been in New Orleans for at least 40 years, some po’boy shops have resorted to cutting corners in a last-ditch attempt to slash costs.
In fact, Edge uncovers one sandwich maker in Metairie that uses pre-cut Iceberg lettuce. The horror!
To the Rescue
But fear not. Edge has found a group of po’boy makers, a moxie bunch, that have heard the Clarion call.
“Preservationists rail against the lowering of standards. In response, they’re setting standards of their own and, perhaps, kindling a renaissance,” he writes.
One preservationist Edge found said, “far too many of the po’ boy makers in his hometown are complacent, even lazy. He questioned the culinary patriotism of competitors who use powdered and bagged mixes for their roast beef gravy.” Treasonous!
So endangered is the po’boy that Whann created the New Orleans Po-Boy Preservation Society, according to Edge.
But she didn’t quit there.
“Recently, Leidenheimer financed a nutritional analysis that Katherine Whann said found that a gravy-dressed roast beef po’ boy, on Leidenheimer bread, with mustard, lettuce, tomato and pickles, has fewer calories from fat and less saturated fat than a comparable tuna sandwich from Subway.”
Take that, Jared!
Armed with facts, the preservationists took the street -- namely Oak Street -- and gave New Orleans the Po’boy Festival, which, with a little luck, just may save the iconic sandwich.
These brave folks, the guardians of the flame, understand the deep calculus of Barq’s Root Beer, Leidenheimer bread, Blue Plate mayo, salty roast beef gravy and Louisiana seafood that are essential to saving to the endangered po’boy. Perhaps they should be called to fix the city's budget crisis.
So as Louisiana takes its state bird, the brown pelican, off the endangered species list, maybe now is the time to petition the governor to save the po’boy?
