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New Orleans’ Po-Boy: Johnny’s Versus Tracey’s

The classic New Orleans Po-Boy sandwich comes down to two choices.

Johnny’s Menu

I know Johnny’s Po-Boy (511 St Louis St) is nearby and now is a good time to scratch the Po-Boy itch. Johnny’s advertises self-deprecatingly that “Even My Failures Are Edible.”

Johnny’s exudes homespun shabby. Red-checked oil cloths—with tiny red crabs silhouetted on intersecting lines—cover the tables. Bottles of ketchup and hot sauce stand on each table. Ordering at the counter, Gene picks the catfish Po-Boy and I choose shrimp, both “dressed” with lettuce, tomato, mayo and pickle.

Customers pour their own drinks from the soda fountain or from the sweetened or unsweetened Nestea ice tea dispensers. A man in a white apron calls out our order number within a minute or two.

Only a few tables are occupied: a dirty young man gorges at one table; a business man approaches his sandwich more methodically at another. An older couple sits facing the red-paned window at a table that blocks one of the doors. An Abita neon beer sign in the window advertises the local brew.

Customers start flowing in more rapidly; a line forms in front of the deli counter. I expect this pace is more typical and we were lucky to beat the rush.

Our sandwiches are crusty-white-bread good. Pieces of fried shrimp and shredded lettuce fall onto my plate but that seems like nature’s course. I can only eat half, but I eat the top slice of bread from the second half.

Tracey’s: The Local Po-Boy Fave

Center Stage: Fried Okra

We taxi with B. from the hotel to Tracey’s (2604 Magazine St) in the Irish Channel Neighborhood for a real Po-Boy. A car in front of us stops at a yellow light. Our cab driver swerves, then pulls up alongside the car and berates the driver. “You made me almost hit you!” Our cabbie repeats this over and over, expecting something from the errant driver, but I am not sure what.

B.says we landed the only angry cabbie in New Orleans.

Tracey’s is a musty barn with long wood picnic tables. T-shirts for sale hang around the big bar and metal signs are posted on every inch of wall space. Fancy umbrellas are suspended upside down from the ceiling.

B. explains Tracey’s owners used to own Parasol’s, located a couple blocks away. The landlord jacked up Parasols rent and Parasol’s lost their lease and the name with it. The owners packed up their paraphernalia, set up camp in the new nearby location and took Parasol’s customers with them. A Florida man bought the Paraso’ls lease and paid a pretty penny for the famous name.

Tracey’s Wins

Bryan and Gene have sloppy roast beef Po-Boy’s and I have the catfish Po-Boy. We share some deep fried okra. I can’t explain what is different from Johnny’s, the bread, maybe?

Tracey’s Po-Boys kick Johnny’s Po-Boy’s ass.

Hotel Monteleone, New Orleans

A stay at the legendary, romantic Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans

The famous Hotel Monteleone Exterior

Located smack in the center of Royal Street in the French Quarter, the 1886 Hotel Monteleone (214 Royal St) is part of the heart and history of New Orleans. The hotel’s roster of famous guests and the rotating Carousel Bar make Hotel Monteleone a destination, not just a place to stay. This affordable hotel makes my Top Ten Most Intriguing Hotels list.

The doormen give Gene and I fast, attentive service when our taxi pulls up to the hotel entrance. We feel like we are emerging from an elegant horse-drawn carriage. The bellmen dress like royal footmen and attend incoming guests with supreme southern hospitality.

Though still sumptuous, the Hotel Monteleone looks more faded in the flesh than in their online photos. The lobby seems less polished; the grandfather clock in the center, much smaller.

Many small love seats and chairs are scattered around the comfortable lobby, so it was easy to use as a meeting place. The 1909 grandfather clock makes an elegant old-style centerpiece.

Literary Legends

I glimpse the Carousel Piano Bar to my right as I enter. The bar room is dark— it is only eleven in the morning. I hope the fabled rotating bar will be as majestic now as it was in the days of its legendary guests: Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Truman Capote and Eudora Welty. The Hunt Grill is closed too, but through its window-paned door, I see white-clothed covered tables set with austere elegance.

Perhaps I over-romanticize the lives of the Literati and their hotel connections. The New York writers had the Algonquin Hotel and the writers of the South had the Hotel Monteleone.

The writer who adopted more locales than any other, Ernest Hemingway, was also a frequent guest at the Hotel Monteleone. Truman Capote claimed to have been born in the grand hotel, but perhaps he meant in his heart rather than in body. Or perhaps, Capote was a teller of tales.

The Carousel Bar

Gene, B. and I have a drink at our home base, The Carousel Bar in the lobby of the Hotel Monteleone. We sit at a corner table since customers fill all seats at the rotating carousel. The bar seats, with wild animal pictures on the chairbacks, rotate slowly enough for easy people-watching. B. has a Hemingway Daiquiri and Gene orders a Sidecar before switching to the local beer, Abita.

One patron looks like Rod Stewart, with Stewart’s classic sloping nose and dark-rooted blond spiky hair. We entertain the notion for a second (only a second!) that he might indeed be Rod Stewart. But we chalk the man up as a reasonably good Stewart impersonator. Until we hear him sing.

After B. says good night, “Rod” belts out a few lines of Maggie May and we wish B. had stayed to witness the hilarity. Then Rod sings the lines again. And again. Now he has the attention of the folks around the bar. Cameras come out and “Rod” basks in the attention.

New Orleans and A Confederacy of Dunces

Ignatius J. Reilly

How would you psych up for a trip to New Orleans? I am re-reading A Confederacy of Dunces, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that epitomizes the city, the tale that puts the color in the phrase “colorful characters.”

I read Dunces first for the funny, fantastic madcap story. But re-reading it, I discover its layers, the sadness behind the bluster and the universal humanity behind each of the New Orleans locals: Miss Trixie, who just wants to retire and get the Thanksgiving turkey owed her, asleep again at her desk; Dorian Greene, the foppish French Quarter habitue; and Burma Jones, a janitor working below the “minimal wage.”

And the anti-hero, Ignatius J. Reilly. I just like to hear the sound of “Ignatius J. Reilly” over again in my head.

Ignatius is sloth himself, blaming the world and the fools around him for everything that happens. And everything that doesn’t happen. Oh, Fortuna!

Especially poignant is the relationship between Ignatius and his mother. He is cruel and condescending to her yet he makes a show of putting her on the maternal pedestal in public all while not fooling anyone. Mrs. Reilly refers to her son as “my boy” and appears not to understand or care when she is being disrespected.

But she does care and she does get fed up. She makes “her boy” get a job and surprisingly he does, first at Levy Pants, then as a hot dog vendor in the French Quarter. By the end, she is ready to have him committed.

The author, John Kennedy Toole, committed suicide thinking his book would never be published. The novel was published in 1980, eleven years after Toole’s death, thanks to his mother pounding endlessly on publishing doors.

Wait! Who does that sound like? Mrs. Reilly, is that you?

Eggs Benedict: What do the Birthers Believe?

I stand corrected.
I have always believed Eggs Benedict, America’s ubiquitous brunch dish, was invented at Brennan’s, the famous New Orleans restaurant. I ate the best Eggs Benedict of my life there–two poached eggs as spherical as globes, the lava of its yellow yolks popping out and running thickly down the mountain sides, captured by the craters of its muffin base.
The meal was a beautiful, three-course breakfast accompanied by champagne, lots of champagne. Indeed, the best breakfast of my life.
The question of the dish’s invention came up while G and I were scarfing yet another variation of standard Bennies at our local deli–salmon instead of Canadian Bacon and inventively, a potato pancake instead of the muffin. I stood by my belief in Brennan’s but G was sure the dish was invented right here in New York.
Word around the internet is, that Eggs Benedict was birthed either at Delmonico’s in New York’s Financial District or the Waldorf-Astoria uptown. Delmonico’s claim of credit for the invention of many dishes raises my suspicion (the hamburger? really?).
Even Brennan’s own website does not take credit for the Sunday brunch staple. Their menu calls Eggs Benedict a”traditional dish”, but does take credit for Eggs Hussarde.
The description from Brennan’s online menu:

EGGS HUSSARDE
(A Brennan’s Original)
One of the dishes that put
“Breakfast at Brennan’s” on
the map. Poached eggs atop
Holland rusks, Canadian bacon
and Marchand de Vin sauce.
Topped with Hollandaise sauce.
Suggested Wine – Sauvignon Blanc

Surfing around Brennan’s website, I realize what I really ate that day was their Eggs Ellen, a bennie variation with salmon.