Parkway Bakery & Tavern

New Orleans, Louisiana
If you ever happen to visit the Crescent City, you absolutely have to try a Po-Boy. This is my third post referring to one now, and it's also in New Orleans for the third time as well... starting to see the trend? I decided to opt out of the raging experience of what is known to be Mardi Gras this year. Well... for the most part. I saw the Muses parade for the first time. But before that, I took a trip to the winner of Best of New Orleans 2011 award, Parkway Bakery and Tavern, with a couple of friends.



You may have seen it mentioned in the Food Wars episode involving Parkway and Domilise's for the best Po-Boy in New Orleans. Domilise's won, but that's not the point, I knew from word of mouth that this place is extraordinary. You step into Parkway's and you know for sure that you're in New Orleans, it's very rustic and has a lot of old school paintings and drawings all over the walls. This place has a ridiculously large patio seating area as well, the crowd comes by the masses at lunch time. I took the advice from my friend and chose the Surf and Turf Po-Boy instead of just the traditional shrimp.



It comes with slow cooked roast beef topped with golden fried gulf shrimp and gravy. It's quite messy so grab a ton of napkins. A fully dressed Po-Boy at Parkway comes with lettuce, tomato, pickle and mayo on French bread. Their bread held up quite nicely against the gravy of the roast beef, but wasn't tough. The Po-Boy was excellent. You bite into it and get all of the flavor that you should when you bite into beef that has been slow roasting for 24 hours. (they really do cook it for 24 hours) Once you get past that, you bite into a piece of perfectly fried shrimp and reach a new height of flavor. The messiness is really the only downfall of the Po-Boy, other than that, this thing is heaven. I recommend spraying some Crystal Sauce on your Po-Boy for a needed kick.

How Parkway didn't win Food Wars is quite astonishing, I guess I'm going to have to pay a little visit to Domilise's because it'll be pretty hard to top what I experienced.



Parkway Bakery and Tavern - 538 Hagan Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana
http://www.parkwaypoorboys.com/