“The po’boy’s important to the city of New Orleans because New Orleans made it.” Today Bon Appétit spends the day with Justin Kennedy, general manager of Parkway Bakery and Tavern in New Orleans, preparing to serve the city’s famous poor boy (po’boy) sandwiches.
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00:00 The Po'boy is important to the city of New Orleans because New Orleans made it.
00:05 Something that was just rooted in New Orleans history that kind of bubbled up from the streets.
00:10 It turned into like everyday life. People have to do it. They have to get their Po'boy fix.
00:16 Parkway has been here for over a hundred years and it's outlasted generations.
00:21 I've been here 20 years and I don't want to do anything else.
00:26 So when I wake up on a Saturday morning I know we're going to put out 1,500 or 2,000 sandwiches.
00:30 I don't sweat it. New Orleans comes to me every single day and I get a chance to feed.
00:37 Hey, I'm Justin Kennedy, General Manager of Parkway Bakery and Tavern,
00:46 and you are in my apartment right above the restaurant.
00:50 It's about 7 a.m. I have two bread delivery trucks bringing 700 loaves of bread
00:56 and all I got to do is walk right down these stairs and meet them.
01:00 So I get a double order of bread on Saturday.
01:07 So what we have coming right now, 7 on the dot, this is John Gendusa
01:11 and they invented the Po'boy loaf for the streetcar strikers back in 1929.
01:17 What's going on, man? How you doing? Good to see you.
01:22 Ready for a busy day.
01:24 I'm going to give you a hand with it. Don't let it fool you. This bread's not light.
01:32 Backing up is Leidenheimer. They've been around since the 1800s.
01:37 They're one of the original bakers in the city.
01:39 They didn't invent the Po'boy, but they make it right, too.
01:45 So we built it to 70. Each one's 10. So that's 700 loaves.
01:50 So each loaf will do six smalls or three larges.
01:54 We're looking to do close to 3,000 sandwiches between today, Saturday, and tomorrow, Sunday.
02:00 What's up, Andrew? How are you, man?
02:03 So while I'm doing this by myself right now, that's one thing about living here,
02:07 being on top of the business, because look, my crew works,
02:10 they get here at 8 in the morning, they're here until 7 at night, you know?
02:13 So they're working close to 10 hours, 11 hours a day.
02:16 So I'm here in the morning to catch some odds and ends.
02:19 When I crack this baby open, look at that.
02:22 Looks like cotton candy, melt in your mouth.
02:25 When you load it up with shrimp, oysters, catfish, sloppy roast beef, and pile it high,
02:30 this just disintegrates and melts in your mouth.
02:33 So you're not eating heavy, dense bread, but it's strong enough to hold it.
02:38 That's the beauty of New Orleans French bread.
02:40 The Great Depression hit a lot of people. Streetcar drivers, when these guys weren't getting paid, they went on strike.
02:46 And former streetcar conductors, Benny and Clovis Martin, they said,
02:49 "Look, you come down to the Martin Brothers grocery store, you show your badge, we'll feed you.
02:55 We'll feed our poor boys."
02:57 And they were baking French bread as well, but the bread was wide in the middle and skinny on the ends, like a football.
03:04 John Gendousa came up with a 36-inch loaf back in 1929, consistently the same size from beginning to end.
03:14 And this is what they still bake today.
03:16 You see it this morning, by the end of the day, all this will be gone.
03:19 And by now I've got two team members coming to slice this up, get it ready for service.
03:23 But now I don't want to be surprised, so we're going to go look and see what kind of orders we have for today on online and parties.
03:33 You're in Parkway's main bar.
03:36 This is an original OG bar, it's been around since the opening day, which was around 1911.
03:42 This is the most sought-after place to sit in the restaurant.
03:46 There's a lot of people watching.
03:48 We probably have about, one, two, we probably have about six dining spaces.
03:52 So right here we have a couple small ones, a couple of bigger ones.
03:56 Between all these spaces we have here, we probably have 300 seats.
04:00 So it's a little early, but sometimes a lot of orders come through online and we have parties that come through in big orders.
04:06 So I like to go check those first.
04:08 This is what we got going on for today.
04:10 Looks like we got 30 people, that's an 11 o'clock, that's no big deal.
04:14 We got a 12 noon pickup order for Alex.
04:17 That's about 20 sandwiches, that's no big deal.
04:20 And then we got another 30 at 11.45.
04:23 We could probably put that out in about 10, 15 minutes.
04:27 If we have 30 sandwiches and they're all shrimp po'boys, I'll tell everybody on the line, "Hey, everybody make five shrimp."
04:33 And we can get that 30 sandwich done in four minutes or five minutes.
04:37 This is in November, we have like a wedding reception.
04:40 So we're also going to go to the office and we're going to check the online orders.
04:43 So this office is pretty big.
04:45 My cousin has a spot, my mother has a spot, my uncle has a spot.
04:49 We got about 20 orders.
04:51 You can see what's going on ahead of time, but the ticket will fire 15 minutes.
04:55 So even though there's one already in for 11.55, it's going to fire at 11.40.
05:02 I'll look for the ones like this one, this is $181.
05:06 So you want to make sure you might have a little bit more than 15 minutes to get that out.
05:11 I'll go ahead and print it out and have it ready for the team to know that's coming in.
05:16 All right, so it's 8.15 and we're about to go pick up one of our employees.
05:20 [music]
05:25 We're going to get Mr. Purcell Ford.
05:27 He's been with us for about 12 years and he is at the least to say a character.
05:33 He's about 73 and he just had a kidney transplant.
05:36 And I donated a kidney to my brother about 10 years ago.
05:40 So, you know, I know what he's been going through and he's back to work.
05:45 As a GM, look, it's not my responsibility to pick staff members up and bring them to work, and I don't do that.
05:52 But Parkway is nothing without the people in it making it happen every day.
05:56 You want to make sure your people are taken care of.
06:00 And I do my best. You know, I'm not perfect, but I do my best to make sure my team knows I love them.
06:06 I care about them.
06:07 We're going to come up here and take a left and we're going to land right on Frenchman Street.
06:11 And it's music club after music club after music club.
06:15 You're sitting in the front, man.
06:16 My name is Purcell Ford. The ladies call me Purcell.
06:20 I call him Ford, the old ass man.
06:22 [laughs]
06:23 What you say when I call you old ass man?
06:25 Live to get old. That's all you have to do.
06:28 Live to get old.
06:29 Just keep on living. You'll get old one day.
06:32 And I seen Parkway. I said, let me go over there and put an application in.
06:35 I said, well, I'm going to tell you something.
06:37 I'm one of the best fried cooks in the city.
06:40 My name is well known all over the quarters.
06:42 So I went to work and Kennedy said, you know what, Ford?
06:46 I was there for about two or three years frying.
06:48 I was a little younger.
06:50 And he said, you're the best fried cook that came through the door.
06:53 I said, I appreciate that. But all jokes aside, you got to pay me like that.
06:58 [laughs]
06:59 But like I say, it's a nice place to work for.
07:02 And I appreciate everything you done for me.
07:04 Man, we open in 30 minutes, man. Let's get to work. Stop all that talking, man.
07:07 [laughs]
07:09 You see what I'm saying about it?
07:10 All right, gentlemen. I'm going to holler at y'all later. Y'all stay cool.
07:15 Go in there and psych them up. Get them all happy, Ford.
07:17 All right, B. I hear you.
07:19 Thank you, man.
07:20 So it's about 9 o'clock. It's about an hour before we open the doors.
07:25 About to go press some roast beef.
07:27 [music]
07:34 Hello, Ms. Dawn.
07:35 Hi.
07:36 We're constantly prepping throughout the day in these back kitchens to feed the main one to get the sandwiches out.
07:43 And you're in the roast beef kitchen.
07:45 So that's all we do in here.
07:47 We'll do roast beef and we'll cook about 400 pounds a day.
07:51 So this roast beef is for the signature sandwich at Parkway Bakery.
07:55 The roast beef po' boy.
07:56 It's smothered in gravy.
07:58 Put it on a sandwich with mayo.
07:59 That French bread I showed you, toasted just right.
08:01 Can't beat it.
08:02 I mean, look at this.
08:03 This is chuck roast.
08:05 I mean, we do about 2,000 pounds a week, close to a ton a week.
08:09 And chuck roast is very fatty.
08:11 There's grains going all over the place.
08:13 It's best known and best uses for hamburgers.
08:16 But in this case, if you cook it low and slow, all that fat melts away into the gravy and you're left with flavor.
08:24 We cook this roast beef.
08:25 We put it in about 6 o'clock yesterday evening.
08:28 We take it out about 8 o'clock in the morning.
08:30 So about 14 to 16 hours, this roast comes out just like this, where it's just, I mean, literally falling apart.
08:37 Even though I can take my hands and just pull it apart, that's not how you want to serve it.
08:42 When you're pulling it right now, all this moisture is leaving the meat and it's going to dry it out.
08:47 So you want to, you want it to cool solidly together.
08:51 Slice it cool.
08:53 Put that gravy on it.
08:54 Put it on the line.
08:55 It just makes a sloppy, great sandwich.
08:58 I'm going to put this on this pan and wheel it to the cooler.
09:01 Catch that door for me, young fella.
09:10 And you see, here's our chilled from the day before.
09:18 So this chilled roast beef is going back to the kitchen we just left to be sliced.
09:23 You see how nice that breaks and nice and tender?
09:26 It's not stringy or pully like if I was to pull it while it was hot.
09:30 And all that moisture is still in the slice because I never cracked the meat open when it was finished cooking.
09:38 So the roast beef po' boy was just about the original po' boy invented for the striking streetcar workers.
09:44 They took the scraps of meat and the gravy and put fried potatoes on the French bread.
09:49 And we still have that sandwich today.
09:51 It's actually a pretty good seller.
09:52 We call it the streetcar po' boy.
09:55 So this is the thin au jus that came off the meat before we thicken it.
10:00 So this is the gravy before thickened.
10:03 Oven set to 350 degrees.
10:06 Throw that in there for about 30, 35 minutes.
10:09 And it's that parkway roast beef everybody loves.
10:12 So this is just one, but we have a whole bunch in this oven that Brandon put in that's about to come out.
10:17 So when Brandon takes all this roast out, he's going to head over into the main kitchen that we pumped the sandwiches out of.
10:25 He's going to fill all six sandwich makers hot wells up with that roast beef and barbecue beef and gravy to get ready for service.
10:33 So the roast beef's all on the line.
10:35 Service underway here.
10:37 So I'm going to get in the kitchen and start making some sandwiches.
10:39 All right, y'all. It's 1030.
10:44 It's not quite lunch rush yet, but things are starting to kick off.
10:48 And right now is a good time where a lot of my employees go take their breaks before the lunch rush hits.
10:53 So I usually jump in here and help out.
10:55 All right. So this is the main kitchen. All the sandwiches are made.
10:58 This section of the kitchen goes from the main register prints to this ticket.
11:02 And everything is on the line from the roast beef, barbecue beef, meatballs, shrimp.
11:09 Every sandwich maker can make every sandwich.
11:11 There's no certain station.
11:13 So that's what's a beauty about it.
11:15 That's how we can get them out.
11:16 A lot of kitchens have a lot of different stations like a seafood station or a sliced meat station.
11:21 But here, there's so many people in this tight spot.
11:25 It's faster and it's just more efficient.
11:28 Every person can turn and do everything for one ticket.
11:32 They're not waiting on someone else to complete their order.
11:35 You know, each sandwich maker probably does a few hundred sandwiches in a span.
11:40 We have one person dedicated to frying shrimp.
11:43 I mean, this is a 20-foot hood.
11:45 You can see about 15 foot of it is just dedicated to shrimp.
11:49 And that's all Reggie's doing today.
11:51 He'll probably fry about 500 pounds of shrimp today.
11:53 There's no wet batter. There's no egg wash.
11:55 We take that natural salty juice from the shrimp.
11:58 And that's light corn flour, a little salt, pepper, cayenne in there.
12:01 And when he drops a basket, I mean, he's dropping about five or six sandwiches right there.
12:06 So right now I'm making a shrimp po' boy dressed.
12:08 This is one of our high volume, most popular sandwiches.
12:11 Dressed is lettuce, tomato, mayo, and pickle.
12:15 You want to make sure you get a corner to corner.
12:17 [Music]
12:21 So we got this fried shrimp.
12:23 We're going to put that on there.
12:25 And our most popular sandwiches are not pre-measured or pre-weighed like a burger patty or some deli meat that's weighed.
12:33 It's made by hand and by feel.
12:36 We don't want to measure it and have a little cup and put a cup of shrimp in there.
12:40 That's skimpy.
12:41 And if stuff's falling out, that's fine.
12:43 Just wrap it up.
12:44 [Music]
12:47 So what we have here is the OG, the signature, roast beef.
12:51 And they want it dressed.
12:52 I mean, that's pretty much the standard.
12:54 Tomato, pickle, and then this one.
12:58 Here's your roast beef.
13:00 I mean, that's what we saw this morning.
13:02 Put that on it.
13:03 And then when I put that gravy I was telling you about, you put that on top of it and it just, look, it just latches on to it.
13:10 Look how delicious that looks.
13:12 [Music]
13:14 So this one's going to be the James Brown.
13:16 And it's pepper jack cheese.
13:17 But the key to this one is not just putting the cheese on there.
13:20 We run this cheese in the broiler.
13:23 You can see it's nice and melty.
13:25 And that little step right there makes a huge difference.
13:28 So this is the barbecue beef.
13:30 Then we're going to run it down with this shrimp.
13:32 It's like a poor man's steak and lobster.
13:34 So the next thing we're going to do is put some more barbecue sauce on it.
13:37 And then the last thing is we're going to put that spicy mayo on it.
13:41 Don't tell me that don't look good.
13:43 And that's the James Brown, award winner.
13:47 This boy right here.
13:49 [Music]
13:53 I mean, yeah, you're looking at like 28 ounces right here.
13:59 So this is a good pound and a half right here in your belly.
14:02 All my team's about done taking their breaks.
14:04 So I'm going to finish these few tickets right here.
14:06 And when they're done, I'm going to jump on Expo.
14:09 [Music]
14:12 It's 1230. We in the heart of the kitchen where it goes down.
14:16 I'm battling it out with my team. It's mid-lunch rush. It's real busy.
14:19 So expediting that parkway is a little different from other restaurant expediting.
14:23 The Expo is dropping the fries. The Expo's dropping all the call foods.
14:28 Burgers, chicken, sausage, grilled cheeses, hot hams, hot turkeys.
14:32 And then they put it together with all the sides and fries and sell it out the window.
14:36 Most expediters are on the other side of the line grabbing plates, putting things together.
14:42 In this sense, the expediter is actually behind the line cooking and working with the team.
14:47 It's like a hybrid of an expediter and line cook in one.
14:51 So we like to keep a 10 to 15 minute ticket time, which it looks like that's about where we're at right now.
14:57 So behind each line, you'll see a grill.
15:00 Like right now we've got a burger about done. What's on that burger?
15:03 American. American?
15:07 Yeah, so this grill is very important. You know, we're listening to the calls.
15:11 You've got to be very, very attentive when you're one of our expediters.
15:15 If you're not an attention to detail kind of person, you won't last being a parkway bakery.
15:20 I used to be, my spot was right there where Manny is.
15:23 I used to be on that spot all day, every day. You know, when I was a kid.
15:27 I've worked every spot in this kitchen. My favorite spot is Expo.
15:31 When I'm looking out at this ticket board, I'm making sure everybody's keeping up.
15:35 I'm making sure the fry man's keeping up, the bread person's keeping up, the flow is going right.
15:40 You need one more, right?
15:42 Mostly watching the flow, watching the ticket time.
15:45 Looks like my crew has it over here, so we're going to go check some other spaces in the restaurant and the online and the outdoors.
15:57 So it's about 1.30 and we're on our pre-order drive-through.
16:00 You can see way in the distance over there, that young man, that's Sal.
16:04 He's like the parking lot maitre d', guiding all the online and phone traffic.
16:09 Basically, this came out of COVID when it was all to-go and no one could come in.
16:14 We had the space to develop this to-go system that evolved into something that's like epic.
16:20 You order on the online app from your house, he's mic'd up to the kitchen and that order's ready.
16:25 And they're going to pull him up and then Adam's going to come out here right to the blinking light and they're going to get their food and go.
16:31 I don't see a lot of my regulars anymore.
16:33 I didn't know what happened to them.
16:34 Like, where are my regulars?
16:35 You go hanging out in the booth with Sal, that's where they are.
16:38 They're coming through the drive-through.
16:39 It's like a whole other restaurant.
16:41 We've opened up doing this and we'll serve hundreds of people.
16:44 We used to be open until 10 o'clock.
16:46 Now we're only open until 6.
16:48 One of the reasons we can close early and do the same numbers as open until 10 o'clock is this drive-through.
16:55 It's phenomenal how many people it turns out.
16:57 All these spots are numbered.
16:59 1 through 90.
17:01 If it's not ready, we'll park them and we'll run it to them in that golf cart right there.
17:05 You got a pickup for Jack in there?
17:07 Jack's almost ready.
17:08 Go ahead and park him and we'll bring it right to him, Sal.
17:11 I'm going to put Jack in number 39, all right?
17:14 Sounds good. I'm going to check on it.
17:15 This works good when it's raining.
17:18 People don't want to get out of their car.
17:20 Some people use it as a car hop.
17:22 39, so this must be Jack right here.
17:24 Jack? All right, man.
17:26 Roast beef.
17:27 I appreciate it. Thank you.
17:28 Have a good one, man.
17:29 You too.
17:30 Easy as that.
17:31 All right, so it's 2 o'clock.
17:38 Things have slowed down a little bit.
17:40 So I jumped up here in our prep kitchen to make some jambalaya.
17:43 And we're going to make about 200 pounds of chicken and sausage jambalaya.
17:47 We use about 40 pounds of sausage.
17:49 This recipe came from a barbecue team I'm on called Silence of the Hams.
17:54 And it's for a fundraiser called Hogs for the Cause.
17:57 We raise money for pediatric brain cancer on a big barbecue team.
18:01 So we're going to fire this big boy up.
18:04 And what this is is a tilt skillet.
18:06 And it's basically just a big pot.
18:09 And when you fill it up whatever you want to,
18:11 you can tilt it and get rid of the product and easily put it in pans.
18:16 So first thing to do, we're going to melt 2 pounds of butter.
18:20 So here in Creole cooking in Louisiana, they call it the Holy Trinity,
18:23 like the Father, Son, the Holy Ghost.
18:25 Your onion, your bell pepper, and your celery.
18:28 But then we throw the garlic in there too.
18:30 That makes it a little bit holier.
18:32 About 15 pounds here.
18:38 And now it's going to start coming together.
18:41 When that fat starts rendering out that sausage and getting into that veg.
18:45 And it's very important you do it like this.
18:48 Cook your veg first. Render that down with the butter.
18:51 Then cook your sausages down. Render that down with the sauteed vegetables.
18:55 If you just throw it all in there, fill it up with water, put your rice in,
18:58 you're not going to get that flavor like if you were to do it in this step process.
19:03 Because what's happening right now, that fat's getting cooked,
19:07 rendering out of that sausage and soaking up in the vegetables.
19:12 And if you did it and just boiled it and cooked it without rendering,
19:16 that fat could just end up floating on the top and not actually in it.
19:20 Me and my wife and my baby, I can't just cook for us.
19:23 I always got to cook for a ton of people.
19:26 I love the production. I love the volume aspect of it just because I've been around it.
19:31 If I was cooking one little pan of jambalaya, it'd drive me crazy.
19:34 I don't even know if I'd know how to do it. I got to cook in bulk.
19:38 And this here is about 25 pounds of chicken.
19:42 This will serve about 350 people. This will serve.
19:46 All right. So our jambalaya is ready.
19:49 I mean, you can look at it and tell this is some creamy jambalaya.
19:55 I mean, jambalaya is like, I mean, it goes back centuries.
19:59 It's like an inexpensive, delicious meal.
20:01 And if you look at most of the meals that Louisiana is known for, jambalaya, gumbo, po' boys,
20:09 they're derived off something that's inexpensive, delicious and super filling.
20:14 All right, guys, it's about four o'clock. As you can see, it's starting to slow down.
20:18 It's time for y'all to go. I've had a lot of fun with y'all, but I got to get some prep to do for tomorrow.
20:24 See y'all next time.
20:28 So I'm calling to check in with my wife. She's in Lafayette with Josephine, our baby.
20:32 My wife is pretty much in the same business as me.
20:35 Her family has a po' boy shop in Lafayette called Old Time Grocery.
20:38 Her dad started it. So we met seven, eight years ago in a competition for the best po' boy in the state of Louisiana.
20:47 You know, Becca comes down here and she comes in the restaurant looking for me.
20:52 I could kind of tell she was looking for more than the roast beef.
20:55 Hello. What are y'all doing?
21:00 Oh, no, you don't get to see your dad right now.
21:05 This little baby is a handful.
21:07 - And pull.