New Orleans Po-Boy Preservation Festival catches national attention

Arts & Entertainment, Business & Economy, Food, City Life, Recovery

November 10th, 2009

It is ALMOST that time. Next Sunday, November 22, a section of Oak St. at S. Carrollton will be filled with people salivating to try one of the many po-boys that will be served up at the 3rd New Orleans Po-Boy Preservation Festival. There’ll be Vietnamese po-boy with cilantro, hot peppers and pork, barbecued shrimp, fried green tomato with shrimp and remoulade, barbecued oyster po-boys just to name a few.

The 2009 New Orleans Po-Boy Preservation Festival will feature two stages with live music, arts and crafts, a children’s section with games and prizes, panel discussions covering the history of the po-boy (starting at 11:00 a.m.) and, of course, the best tasting po-boys in New Orleans.
event details

“Poor boy sandwiches represent bedrock New Orleans. The shotgun house of New Orleans cuisine, Po-boys are familiar but satisfying. The sandwich is as diverse as the city it symbolizes. The crisp loaves have served as a culinary crossroads, encasing the most pedestrian and exotic of foods: shrimp, oyster, catfish, soft-shell crabs as well as French fries and ham and cheese. Comfort food in other cities seldom reaches such heights.” PoboyFest.com
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Schedule of Events
Watch video New Orleans Po-Boy Festival 2008 by A City of Friends

Congratulations to the Organizers and Sponsors of the fest on the national exposure!

from NYTimes
Saving New Orleans Culture, One Sandwich at a Time
“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.

Katherine Whann, who, along with her brother Sandy Whann, operates Leidenheimer Baking Company, the city’s dominant baker of po’ boy bread, frames the struggle in practical as well as cultural terms.

“Most po’ boy shops don’t have off-street parking,” she said, from a perch at Hermes Bar in the French Quarter, as she bit into an oysters Foch po’ boy, stuffed with fried oysters, smeared with pâté. “They don’t have advertising budgets. They don’t have Jared. But what they do have is a history in this place.”

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.

Of course, many still hew to tough standards.

The uptown stalwart Domilise’s Po-Boys, in business more than 75 years, cranks out textbook roast beef po’ boys and fried oyster po’ boys, cooking each batch of bivalves to order, and piling all on Leidenheimer bread, delivered twice daily.

At Zimmer’s Seafood, a working-class market established in 1980 in the city’s Gentilly neighborhood, the proprietor Charleen Zimmer buys Louisiana shrimp from her cousin. (Her husband, Craig Zimmer, works a shrimp boat, too.)

When a customer orders a fried shrimp po’ boy, she reaches first into a bin of iced shrimp, then for a coating of corn flour. And her bread could not be fresher, for Mrs. Zimmer buys sesame-seeded loaves from her neighbor, John Gendusa Bakery.

But a recent tour of old-guard makers found that some paradigmatic players, like Mother’s, a tourist favorite in the central business district, are not aging well.

In suburban Metairie, Radosta Grocery, a beloved checkered-cloth joint, still cooks top rounds for roast beef po’ boys. But Don Radosta, an owner, said slicing lettuce for sandwiches is now too laborious. Instead, he buys shredded iceberg, delivered in plastic-wrapped bundles. And he’s not alone.

Preservationists rail against the lowering of standards. In response, they’re setting standards of their own and, perhaps, kindling a renaissance.

Benjamin Wicks, proprietor of Mahony’s Po-Boy Shop on Magazine Street, open since the summer of 2008, is a raver and ranter with the heart of an old-timer. He makes money selling soft-shell crab po’ boys but also offers po’ boys made with liver cheese, a cold-cut analogue to liverwurst, to signal his respect for the sandwich’s Depression-era roots. “

continue reading original post on NYTimes.com

Speaking of preservation…
Oyster po-boys in particular are on the top of the endangered po-boys list.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration wants to ban the sale of
traditional, raw Gulf Coast oysters for much of the year, even though
people have eaten this pure, natural food for centuries. And shellfish
on the East and West Coasts may be next.
You can help by signing the petition below and helping to spread the word. Thank you in advance.
Save our Shelfish

what HumidBeings are saying
3rd Annual Po Boy Preservation Festival ice coffee and a bagel
Preserving New Orleans Culture One Po’ Boy Sandwich at a Time – United Tastes | NYTimes.com @PoBoyFest nola4ll