A Day Making The Most Famous Sandwiches in New Orleans | On The Line | Bon Appétit

poop is important to the city of New Orleans because New Orleans made it something that was just ingrained. The history of New Orleans that emerged from the streets became everyday life. People have to do it. They have to fix their boy P. Parkway. he has been here for over a hundred years and has survived the generation. I've been here 20 years and I don't want to do anything else, so I wake up on a Saturday morning and I know we're going to make 1,500 or 2,000

sandwiches

. I don't worry because New Orleans comes to me every day and I have the opportunity to feed myself.

Hi, I'm Justin Kennedy, General Manager of Parkway Baker and Tavern and you are in my apartment right above the restaurant. It's around 700 a.m. two bread delivery trucks that bring 700 loaves of bread and all I have to do is go down these stairs and meet them, so I get a double order of bread on Saturday, so what we have right now, at seven sharp, I'm John Jendusa and they invented PoBoy bread for streetcar strikers back in 1929. What's going on? Man. What's happening? How's it going? Are you ready for a busy day? I'll give you a hand, oh, be fooled, this bread is not.

The backup light is lanimer, they have been around since the 19th century. They are one of the city's original bakers. They didn't invent the PoBoy, but they also did it right, so we built it at 70, each one is 10, so it's 700. loaves, so each loaf will serve six small ones or three large ones. We're looking to make about 3,000

sandwiches

between today Saturday and tomorrow Sunday, what's up Andrew, how are you buddy, why am I doing this alone right now? That's one thing about living. I'm aware of the business because look, my team works, they get here at 8:00 in the morning, they're here until 7:00 at night, you know, they work about 10 hours, 11 hours a day, so I'm here in the morning to catch some weird stuff when I open this baby look that looks like cotton candy it melts in your mouth when you load it up with shrimp oysters catfish sloppy roast beef pile this up it just disintegrates and melts in your mouth so you don't Eat bread that is heavy and dense, but strong enough to hold it.

That's the beauty of New Orange French bread. The Great Depression affected many people. The streetcar drivers, when these guys weren't getting paid, went on strike and the former streetcar drivers Ben and Clovis. Martin and said, look, you go down to the Martin Brothers grocery store, you show your badge, we will feed you, we will feed our poor children and they were baking French bread too, but the bread was wide in the middle and thin at the ends. . like a football John Jendusa came up with a 36 inch loaf back in 1929, consistently the same size from start to finish and this is what they still bake today, you'll see it this morning, at the end of the day, all of this will be disappeared and approximately in an hour.

I have two team members coming in to cut this and get it ready for service, but I don't want to be surprised, so let's see what kind of orders we have for today on

line

and in arties. We are in the main bar on Parkway, this is the original OG bar, it's been around since opening day which was around 1911, this is the

most

Salafter place to sit in the restaurant, there are a lot of people watching so We probably have about one, two. We have about six dining spaces so we have a couple of small spaces here and a couple of larger ones between all these spaces that we have here we probably have 300 seats so it's a little early but sometimes a lot of orders come in

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and we have parties coming in and big orders so I like to go check those out first so this is what we have for today.

Looks like we have 30 people, that's at 11:00, that's no big deal, uh, we have at 12:00 noon. pick up order for Alex which is about 20 sandwiches, that's not a big deal and then we get another 30 at 11:45, we could probably make them in about 10 or 15 minutes if we have 30 sandwiches and they're all Shrimp Po Boys. I'll tell everyone on the line Hey, everyone make five shrimp and we can make that 30 sandwich in 4 or 5 minutes. This is in November. We have a wedding reception, so we'll also go to the office and be there. I'm going to check online orders, so this office is pretty big.

My cousin has a place. My mother has a place. My uncle has a place. We received around 20 orders. You can see what's happening ahead of time, but the ticket will go live in 15 minutes, so even though there is already one for 11:55, it will go off at 140. I look for ones like this one, this one is $181 so you should Make sure you have a little more than 15 minutes to take it out. I'll keep going. and print it out and have it ready so the team knows you'll arrive safely, so it's 8:15 and we're about to go pick up one of our employees.

We are going to look for Mr. PCel Ford who has been with us for about 12 years and he is at least to say a character, he is about 73 years old and he just had a kidney transplant and I donated a kidney to my brother about 10 years ago so you know what he's been going through and he's gone back to work as a general manager look it's not my responsibility to pick up staff members and take them to work and me and I don't do that but Parkway It's nothing without the people who make it possible every day, you want to make sure your people are taking care of me and I do the best I can, you know I'm not perfect but I do the best I can to make sure my team knows that the love, I care about them CU, we're going to go up here and turn left and we're going to land right on Frenchman Street and it's music club after music club after music club you're sitting up front my name is pel Ford the last one call me pel I call him Ford an old fool what do you say when I call you old, live to grow old, that's all you have to do, live to grow old, just keep living, someday you'll grow old and I saw Parkway, I said, let me go there and present a request, I said, well, I'm I'm going to tell you something.

I'm one of the best fry cooks in town. My name is well known in every neighborhood, so I went to work and I knew, you know what? I was there for about 2 or three years frying. a little younger and he said you're the best fry cook who didn't walk through the door. I say I appreciate it, but joking aside, you have to pay me like that, but like I say, it's a good place to work. and I appreciate everything you know you've done for me, you know, man, we open in 30 minutes, man, let's get to work, stop talking, man, well, you see what I'm saying about it, okay, gentlemen, I'll call you all later. 'Everyone stay calm, get in there and cheer them up, make them all happy, okay B.

I hear you, thanks man, so it's about 9:00, it's about an hour before we open the doors and go prepare a little roast beef, Miss D. We're constantly prepping throughout the day in these back kitchens to feed the main one to put out the sandwiches and you're in the roast beef kitchen, so that's all we do here, we'll make roast beef and we'll be cooking about 400 lbs a day, so this roast beef is for Parkway Bakery's signature sandwich the roast beef pboy topped with gravy, we put a sandwich on it with mayonnaise, that French bread I showed you, toasted to perfection, it can't get over it, i mean, look at this, this is chuck. roast, I mean, we make about 2,000 pounds a week, about a ton a week, and roast is very fatty, there are grains everywhere, it's better known and better used for burgers, but in this case, yeah You cook it low and slow, all that fat melts into the sauce and you're left with flavor.

We cooked this roast beef. We put it in yesterday afternoon around 6:00 and we took it out around 8:00 in the morning, like this. that between 14 and 16 hours it arrives this roast comes out like this, I mean literally, falling apart even though I can take my hands and just pull it apart, that's not how you want to serve it when you're throwing it in right now, all this moisture is coming out of the meat and leaves. to dry it like this you want you want it to cool solidly together cut it to cool put sauce on it put it on the line just makes a great sloppy sandwich I'm going to put this in this pan and if you roll it to the coolest cat who opens the door for a young man and you'll see , here is our ice cream from the day before, so this cold roast beef is going to go back to the kitchen that we just left to be cut, look how nice it breaks and how nice and tender it is not. fibrous or pulley like you were going to pull it while it was hot and all that moisture is still in the slice because I never opened the meat when it was done cooking, so the roast beef pboy was al

most

the original pboy invented for Striking Street.

The auto workers took the leftover meat in the gravy and put french fries on the French bread and we still have that sandwich today, it actually sells pretty well, we call it the poor streetcar boy so this is the UI thin that came out of the meat meat before thickening it so this is the sauce before thickening oven set to 350° throw it in there for about 30 to 35 minutes and it's the Parkway roast that everyone loves so this is just one, but we have a bunch in this oven that Brandon added is about to come out, so when Brandon gets all this roast out, he's going to head over to the main kitchen where we get the sandwiches from and fill the six Hot Wells sandwich makers with that roast beef and roast beef. . and sauce to get us ready for service, so the roast beef is ready, service is underway here, so I'm going to go into the kitchen and start

making

some sandwiches.

It's 10:30, it's not lunch time yet, but things are there. starting and now is a good time where a lot of my employees take their breaks before lunch time so I usually come in here and help out, this is the main kitchen, all the sandwiches are made in this section. the kitchen goes from the main register printouts to this ticket and everything is on the line, from the roast beef, the barbecue, the meatballs, the shrimp, every sandwich maker, you can make every sandwich, there is no certain station, so that's it the beautiful, this is how we can bring them out.

Many kitties have many different stations, like a seafood station or a cut meat station, but here there are so many people in this predicament that it is faster and more efficient, each person can turn around and do everything for one ticket, they are not. waiting for someone else to complete their order, you know each sandwich maker probably makes a few hundred sandwiches at a time, we have one person dedicated to frying shrimp. I mean, this is a 20 foot bell. You can see about 15 tons are dedicated to just shrimp and that's all Reggie's doing today they're probably frying about 500 pounds of shrimp today there's no wet batter there's no egg wash we take that natural salty juice from the shrimp and that's light corn flour a little bit of salt cayenne pepper in there and when you drop a basket, I mean you're dropping about five or six sandwiches right there so right now I'm

making

a dressed shrimp pboy this is one of our sandwiches most popular high-volume, dressed with lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise and pickles, you should make sure to get it on the corner. corner, so we have these fried shrimp, we're going to put them in there and our most popular sandwiches are not pre-measured or pre-weighed like a burger or some deli meat that is weighed, done by hand and by touch, we're not.

I don't want to measure it and take a small cup and put a cup of shrimp in there, which are sparse and if something falls out, it's okay, just wrap it up, so what we have here is the OG, the signature roast beef and they want it seasoned, I want say. that's pretty much the standard tomato pickle and then this is your roast beef. I mean, that's what we saw this morning, put that on it and then when I put that sauce on it, I was telling you that you put it on top and it just shows. it just sticks to it look how delicious it looks so this is going to be James Brown and it's pepper jack cheese but the key to this one is not just putting the cheese in there we put this cheese on the grill you can see it's nice and melted and that little step right there makes a big difference so this is the barbecue and then we're going to consume it with these shrimp, it's like a poor man filleting lobster, so the next thing we're going to do is put on a little more barbecue sauce and then the last thing is that we are going to put that spicy mayonnaise on it.

I mean, don't tell me that doesn't look good and that's the James Brown Award this kid here won. I mean, yes. you're looking at like 28 or here, so this is a good pound and a half here in your belly. My whole team is about to finish taking their breaks, so I'll finish these few tickets here and when they're done, I'm going to jump to the Expo it's 12:30 we're in the heart of the kitchen where it comes down I'm fighting with my team it's The lunch rush is very busy so Expediting that Parkway is a little different from other restaurants expediter the Expo is dropping the fries, the Expo is dropping all the so-called Food, burgers, chicken sausages, grilled cheeses, hot hams, hot turkeys and then you put that together all the sides and the fries and sell it out the window, most shippersThey are on the other side of the line. grabbing plates, putting things together in this sense, the expeditor is actually behind the line, cooking and working with the equipment, it's like a hybrid of expeditor and line cook in one, so we like to keep a ticket time of 10 to 15 minutes, which looks like it's about where we are now, so behind each line you'll see a grill like now, we have a burger, roughly, what's in that burger, American, American, yeah, so this grill is very Importantly, you know, we are listening to your calls.

You have to be very attentive when you are one of our expediters, if you are not a person who pays attention to details, you will not last as a Parkway bakery. I used to be my place, I was right there where Manny is. I used to be in that place all day, every day, you know, when I was. a kid I've worked on every place in this kitchen, my favorite place is the Expo, but I'm looking at this ticket board. I make sure everyone keeps up. I make sure the fry man keeps up, the bread person keeps up. the flow goes right here, you need one more, yeah, mainly watching the flow, watching the ticket time, looks like my team has it here, so let's go check out some other spaces in a restaurant and, uh, online and outdoors.

It's around 1:30 and I went to a pre-order drive-thru. You can see in the distance that young man who is like the matri D parking lot guiding all the telephone and online traffic. This basically came out of Co when everything was takeout and no one could come in, we had the space to develop this uh to go system that evolved into something epic, you order on the app online from your home, he's connected to the kitchen and that order is ready. and they're going to pick him up and then Adam's going to come out here right into the flickering light and they're going to get his food and they're leaving.

I don't see many of my regular customers anymore. I did not know that. it happened to them like where are my regular customers if you're going to hang out at that stand with s that's where they are they come through the drive thru it's like a whole other restaurant we've opened doing this and we'll serve hundreds of people we used to be open until 10:00 now we are only open until 6:00 one of the reasons we can close early and do the same numbers is that we are open until 10:00 is this self service, it is phenomenal the amount of people that they attend.

All of these spots are numbered 1 to 90. If you're not ready, we'll park them and take them to you in that golf cart. There's a pickup right there for Jack. Jack is almost ready. Go ahead, park them and, uh, us. I'll take it directly to you. I'm going to put Jack at number 39. Okay, sounds good. I'm going to check that. Yes. This works well when it rains. You know people don't want to get out of their car. Some people. Use it like a car jump 39 so this must be Jack here Jack yeah it's okay man roast beef I appreciate it thanks hey have a good man it's that easy okay so they are 2:00 things have slowed down a little so I hopped over here in our prep kitchen to make some jumbalaya and we're going to make about 200 pounds of chicken and sausage jumbalaya we use about 40 pounds of sausage this recipe it came from a barbecue team that I'm on called Silence of the Hams and it's for a fundraiser called hogs for the calls we raised money uh for pediatric brain cancer on the big barbecue team so let's light this kid up big and what this is is a tilt pan and it's basically just a big pot so when you fill it up whatever you want you can tilt it and get rid of the product and easily put it in saucepans so the first thing we're going to do is melt 2 pounds of butter, so here in Louisiana Creole cuisine they call it the Holy Trinity like the father, the son, the Holy Spirit, your onion, your bell pepper and your celery, but then we put the garlic in there too, that makes it a bit holier, about 15 pounds here and now will start to gather when that fat starts. take out that sausage and eat the vegetables and it's very important that you do it that way, cook the vegetables first, spread them with the butter, then cook the sauces, spread them with the sautéed vegetables, if you just throw it all in there, fill it up. with water, put the rice in, you're not going to get that flavor like you do in this step of the process, because what's happening right now is the fat is cooking, coming out of that sausage and absorbing into the vegetables, and if I did it and I just boiled it, boiled it, and, you know, cooked it without melting it.

You know the fat could end up floating on top and not in it. Me, my wife and my baby. I can't just cook for us. I always have to cook for a lot of people. I love the production. I love the volume aspect, just because I've been around if I were cooking a small saucepan of mixture. It drives me crazy. I don't even know if. I know how to do it. I got a bulk cook and this here has about 25 pounds of chicken. This will serve about 350 people. This will help our jumbal be ready. I mean, you can look at it and say this is something.

Creamy jumbalaya, I mean, jumbalaya is like, I mean, it goes back centuries, it's like a delicious, inexpensive meal and if you look at most of the foods that Louisiana is known for, jumbalaya gumbo PoBoy, they're derived from something that is cheap, delicious and super filling. Alright guys, it's around 4:00, as you can see, it's starting to slow down, it's time for you to go. I've had a lot of fun with all of you, but I have to prepare a little for tomorrow, see you. next time so i will call to check with my wife she is in lafayette with josephine our baby my wife is pretty much in the same business as me her family has a pboy store in lafayette called old grocery store her dad He started it, so we met. 7 Eight years ago, in a competition for the best PoBoy in the state of Louisiana, you know, Becca comes here and comes to the restaurant looking for me.

I could tell she was looking more into the flesh Rose. Hello, what are they? Are they doing uh oh this little baby is a handful?