Super Po-Boy Sunday!

In honor of New Orleans, The Saints, Louisiana, Bourbon Street, Satchmo, The French Quarter, Mardi Gras, Ellen Degeneres, Harry Conick Jr., all things Cajun, all things Creole and Dixieland Jazz, my official sandwich recommendation for this coming Superbowl Sunday is none other than the Po-Boy! After all, this is not just a sandwich, it's an institution. Even to the extent that each November, the city of New Orleans holds a Po-Boy Preservation Festival to keep the great sandwich tradition alive. A little history:

Historians say the Po' Boy sandwich was invented by Clovis and Benjamin Martin, brothers and former streetcar drivers, in 1929 at their Martin Brothers Coffee Stand and Restaurant on St. Claude Avenue in the French Market.

It is said that this sandwich extravaganza began during a local transit worker's strike. The streetcar motormen and conductors strike begin on July 1, 1929. Eighteen hundred trolley men struck in New Orleans as a result of a union contract dispute. During the strike/riot, two strikers were killed, five trolleys were burned to the trucks, a car barn was dynamited, trackage was destroyed, and switches were cemented.

The two brothers, took pity on those "poor boys" and began offering sandwiches made from leftovers to any workers who came to their restaurant's back door at the end of the day. For five cents, a striker could buy a sandwich filled with gravy and trimmings (end pieces from beef roasts) or gravy and sliced potatoes

Soon the sandwich, which quickly became known as the po' boy, was being filled with seafood, most notably fried oysters and fried shrimp. In those days, shellfish was abundant and cheap. The affluent joined the crowd because, at lunch or snack time, a po' boy filled with oysters was quicker to consume and easier to digest than one filled with roast beef.

2007 - The first annual New Orleans Preservation Po-Boy Fest was held in New Orleans on Sunday, November 18th. According to the promoters, "After almost eight decades of being taken for granted and having its history misrepresented, the poor boy sandwich takes center stage." Search S365 for my post entitled Po-Boy Fest for more info.