A Day Making The Most Famous Sandwiches in New Orleans

[Justin] The Po' boy's important

to the city of New Orleans.

'Cause New Orleans made it something

that was just rooted in New Orleans history

that kind of bubbled up from the streets.

It turned into, like, everyday life.

People have to do it.

They have to get their Po' boy fix.

Parkway has been here for over 100 years

and it's outlasted generation.

I've been here 20 years

and I don't want to do anything else.

So when I wake up on a Saturday morning,

I know we're going to put

out 1,500 or 2,000 sandwiches,

I don't sweat it.

New Orleans comes to me every single day

and I get a chance to feed.

[punchy music]

Hey, I'm Justin Kennedy, General Manager

of Parkway Bakery and Tavern

and you are in my apartment

right above the restaurant.

It's about 7:00 AM,

I have two bread delivery trucks

bringing 700 loaves of bread

and all I got to do is walk

right down these stairs and meet them.

[jazz music]

So, I get a double order of bread on Saturday.

So, what we have coming right now,

seven on the dot, this is John Gendusa

and they invented the Po' boy loaf

for the streetcar strikers back in 1929.

What's going on man? What's up?

How you doing? What's up?

Good to see you.

Ready for a busy day.

[punchy music]

I'm going to give you a hand with it.

Don't let him fool you, this bread's not light.

Backing up is Leidenheimer.

They've been around since the 1800s.

They're one of the original bakers in the city.

They didn't invent the Po' boy,

but they make it right too.

So we built it to 70, each one's 10,

so that's 700 loaves.

So each loaf will do six smalls or three larges.

We're looking to do close to 3,000 sandwiches

between today, Saturday and tomorrow, Sunday.

What's up, Andrew?

How are you, man?

That's why I'm doing this by myself right now.

That's one thing about living here,

being on top of the business

because look, my crew works.

They get here at eight in the morning.

They're here till seven at night

so they're working close to 10 hours,

11 hours a day.

So, I'm here in the morning

to catch some odds at ends.

When I crack this baby open, look at that.

Looks like cotton candy melting your mouth.

When you load it up with shrimp,

oysters, catfish, sloppy roast beef

and pile it high, this just disintegrates

and melts in your mouth,

so you're not eating heavy, dense bread,

but it's strong enough to hold it.

That's the beauty of New Orleans French bread.

The Great Depression hit a lot of people.

Streetcar drivers, when these guys

weren't getting paid, they went on strike

and former streetcar conductors,

Benny and Clovis Martin, they said,

Look, you come down

to the Martin Brothers grocery store,

you show your badge, we'll feed you,

we'll feed our poor boys.

And they were baking French bread as well,

but the bread was wide in the middle

and skinny on the ends like a football.

John Gendusa came up with a 36 inch loaf

back in 1929, consistently the same size

from beginning to end.

And this is what they still bake today.

You see it this morning, by the end of the day,

all this will be gone and about in an hour,

I got two team members coming to slice this up

and get it ready for service.

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.

[lively music]

You're in Parkway's main bar.

This is original OG bar.

It's been around since, like, the opening day,

which was around 1911.

This is the most sought after place

to sit in the restaurant.

There's a lot of people watching.

We probably have about one, two,

we probably have about six dining spaces.

So, right here we have a couple small ones,

a couple of bigger ones.

Between all these spaces we have here,

we probably have 300 seats.

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.

So I like to go check those first.

This is what we got going on for today.

Looks like we got 30 people,

that's an 11 o'clock, that's no big deal.

We got a 12 noon pickup order for Alex.

That's about 20 sandwiches, that's no big deal.

And then we got another 30 at 11:45.

We could probably put that out

in about 10, 15 minutes.

If we have 30 sandwiches

and they're all shrimp Po' boys,

I'll tell everybody on the line,

Hey everybody make five shrimp.

And we can get that 30 sandwich done

in four minutes or five minutes.

This is in November,

we have like a wedding reception.

So, we're also going to go to the office

and we're going to check the online orders.

So this office is pretty big.

My cousin has a spot, my mother has a spot,

my uncle has a spot.

We got about 20 orders.

You can see what's going on ahead of time,

but the ticket will fire 15 minutes.

So, even though there's one already in for 11:55,

it's going to fire at 11:40.

I'll look for the ones like this one,

this is $181.

So, you want to make sure you might

have a little bit more than 15 minutes

to get that out.

I'll go ahead and print it out

and have it ready for the team

to know that's coming in.

Alright, so it's 8:15

and we're about to go pick up one

of our employees.

[lively music]

We're going to get Mr. Purcell Ford.

He's been with us for about 12 years

and he is at the least to say a character

and he's about 73.

And he just had a kidney transplant.

And I donated a kidney to my brother

about 10 years ago,

so I know what he's been going through.

And he's back to work.

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.

But Parkway's nothing without the people in it

making it happen every day.

You want to make sure your people

are taken care of and I do my best.

I'm not perfect, but I do my best

to make sure my team knows I love them,

I care about them.

'Cause we're going to come up here

and take a left and we're going to land

right on Frenchman Street.

And it's a music club after music club

after music clubs.

You're sitting in the front, man.

My name is Purcell Ford.

The ladies called me Purcell.

[Justin] I call him Ford the old-arse man.

[Purcell laughs]

What'd you say when I call your old-arse man?

[Purcell] Live to get old.

That's all you have to do.

[Justin] Live to get old, Just keep on living.

You'll get old one day.

And I see Parkway, I say let me go over there

and put an application in.

I said, Well look,

I'm going to tell you something.

I'm one of the best fry cooks in the city.

My name is well known all over the quarters.

So I went to work and Kennedy said,

You know what, Ford?

I was there for about two or three years frying.

I was a little younger.

And he said, You the best fry cook

that [indistinct] came through the door.

I say, I appreciate that, but all jokes aside,

you got the pay me like that.

But like I say, it's a nice place to work for

and I appreciate everything you done for me.

[Justin] Man, we open in 30 minutes, man.

Let's get to work.

Stop all that talking, man.

[both laugh]

Well, you see what I'm saying about him?

Alright gentlemen, I'm going to holler

at y'all later.

Y'all stay cool.

[Justin] Go in there and psych them up,

get them all happy, Ford.

Alright Bev, I hear you.

[Justin] Thank you man.

So it's about nine o'clock,

it's about an hour before we open the doors.

About to go prep some roast beef.

[upbeat music]

Hello Miss Dawn.

We're constantly prepping throughout the day

in these back kitchens to feed the main one

to get the sandwiches out

and you're in the roast beef kitchen.

So that's all we do in here.

We'll do roast beef and we'll cook

about 400 pounds a day.

So this roast beef is for the signature sandwich

at Parkway Bakery, the Roast Beef Po' Boy.

It's smothered in gravy.

Put it on a sandwich with mayo.

That French bread I showed you toasted just right.

Can't beat it.

I mean look at this.

This is Chuck roast.

I mean we do about 2000 pounds a week,

close to a ton a week.

And Chuck roast is very fatty.

There's grains going all over the place.

It's best known and best use is for hamburgers.

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.

We cook this roast beef,

we put it in at about six o'clock

yesterday evening and we take it out

about eight o'clock in the morning.

So about 14 to 16 hours,

this roast comes out just like this

where it's just, 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 pulling it right now,

all this moisture is leaving the meat

and it's going to dry it out.

So you want it to cool solidly together,

slice it cool, put that gravy on it,

put it on the line.

It just makes a sloppy great sandwich.

I'm going to put this on this pan

and then wheel it to the cooler.

[light airy music]

Catch that door for my young fella.

[light airy music]

And you see, here's how it chilled

from the day before.

So this chilled roast beef is going back

to the kitchen we just left to be sliced.

You see how nice that breaks and nice

and tender, it's not stringy or pulley.

Like if I was to pull it while it was hot.

And all that moisture is still in the slice

because I never cracked the meat open

when it was finished cooking.

So the Roast Beef Po' Boy was just

about the original Po' boy invented

for the striking streetcar workers.

They took the scraps of meat and the gravy

and put fried potatoes on the french bread.

And we still have that sandwich today.

It's actually a pretty good seller.

We call it the Streetcar Poor Boy.

So this is the thin au jus that came off the meat

before we thicken it.

So this is the gravy before thickened.

Oven set to 350 degrees.

Throw that in there for about 30, 35 minutes.

And it's that Parkway roast beef everybody loves.

So this is just one,

but we have a whole bunch in this oven

that Brandon put in that's about to come out.

So when Brandon takes all this roast out,

he's going to head over into the main kitchen

that we pump the sandwiches out of.

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.

So the roast beef's all on the line,

service underway here.

So I'm going to get in the kitchen,

start making some sandwiches.

All right y'all, it's 10:30,

it's not quite lunch rush yet,

but things are starting to kick off

and right now is a good time where a lot

of my employees go take their breaks

before the lunch rush hits.

So I usually jump in here and help out.

Alright, so this is the main kitchen

all the sandwiches are made.

This section of the kitchen goes

from the main register prints

to this ticket and everything is on the line

from the roast beef, barbecue beef,

meatballs, shrimp.

Every sandwich maker can make every sandwich.

There's no certain station.

So that's what's the beauty about it.

That's how we can get them out.

A lot of kids just have a lot

of different stations like a seafood station

or a sliced meat station.

But here there's so many people

in this tight spot, it's faster

and it's just more efficient.

Every person can turn and do everything

for one ticket.

They're not waiting on someone else

to complete their order.

Each sandwich maker probably

does a few hundred sandwiches in a span.

We have one person dedicated to frying shrimp.

I mean, and this is a 20 foot hood.

You can see about 15 foot of it.

It's just dedicated to shrimp.

And that's all Reggie's doing today.

He'll probably fry 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 it's light corn flour,

a little salt, pepper, cayenne in there.

And when he drops a basket,

I mean he is dropping about five

or six sandwiches right there.

So right now I'm making a Shrimp Po' Boy Dressed.

This is one of our high volume,

most popular sandwiches.

Dressed is lettuce, tomato, mayo, and pickle.

You want to make sure you get a corner to corner.

So we got this fried shrimp,

we're going to put that on there.

And our most popular sandwiches

are not premeasured or pre weighed

like a burger patty

or some deli meat that's weighed.

It's made by hand and by feel.

We don't want to measure it and have a little cup

and put a cup of shrimp in there.

That's skimpy.

And if stuff's falling out, that's fine,

just wrap it up.

So what we have here is the OG,

the signature, roast beef

and they want it dressed.

I mean that's pretty

much the standard.

Tomato, pickle and then this one,

here's your roast beef.

I mean that's what we saw this morning.

Put that on it.

And then when I put

that gravy I was telling you about,

you put that on top of it

and just look it just latches onto it.

Look how delicious that looks.

So this one's going to be the James Brown

and it's pepper jack cheese.

But the key to this one is not

just putting the cheese on there.

We run this cheese in the broiler.

You can see it's nice and melty

and that little step right there

makes a huge difference.

So this is the barbecue beef.

Then we're going to run it down with this shrimp.

It's like a poor man steak and lobster.

So the next thing we're going to do

is put some more barbecue sauce on it.

And then the last thing is we're going

to put that spicy mayo on it.

I mean don't tell me that don't look good.

And that's the James Brown award winner.

This boy right here.

I mean, yeah, you're looking at it

like 28 ounces right here.

So this is a good pound and a half right here

in your belly.

All my team's about done taking their breaks.

So I'm going to finish these few tickets

right here and when they're done I'm going

to jump on expo.

[jazz music]

It's 12:30.

We in the heart of the kitchen

where it goes down.

I'm battling out with my team.

It's mid lunch rush.

It's real busy.

So expediting at Parkway

is a little different

from other restaurant expediter.

The expo is dropping the fries,

the expo's dropping all the call food,

burgers, chicken, sausage,

grilled cheeses, hot hams, hot turkeys.

And then they put it together with all the sides

and fries and sell it out the window.

Most expediters are on the other side

of the line, grabbing plates,

putting things together.

In this sense the expediter is actually

behind the line cooking and working

with the team.

It's like a hybrid of an expediter

and line cook in one.

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.

So behind each line you'll see a grill.

Like right now we got a burger about done.

What's on that burger?

[Chef] American.

[Justin] American?

Yeah, so this grill's very important.

We're listening to the calls.

You got to be very, very attentive

when you're one of our expediters.

If you are not a attention

to detail kind of person,

you won't last being at Parkway Bakery.

I used to be, my spot was right there

where Mandy is.

I used to be on that spot all day every day.

When I was a kid,

I've worked every spot in this kitchen.

My favorite spot is expo,

but I'm looking out at this ticket board,

I'm making sure everybody's keeping up.

I'm making sure the fry man's keeping up,

the bread person's keeping up,

the flow's going right.

You need one more, right?

[Chef 2] Yeah.

[Justin] Mostly watching the flow,

watching the ticket time.

Looks like my crew has it over here.

So we're going to go check

some other spaces in a restaurant

and be online and the outdoors.

[punchy music]

So it's about 1:30

and we're on a pre-order drive-through.

You can see way in the distance over there,

that young man, that's Sal.

He's like the parking lot maitre d

guiding all the online and phone traffic.

Basically this came out of Covid

when it was all to go and no one could come in.

We had the space to develop this to go system

that evolved into something that's like epic.

You order on the online app from your house,

he's miced up to the kitchen

and that order's ready

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.

I don't see a lot of my regulars anymore.

I didn't know what happened to them.

Like where are my regulars?

You go hang in that booth with Sal.

That's where they are.

They're coming through the drive through.

It's like a whole nother restaurant

we've opened up doing this

and we'll serve hundreds of people.

We used to be open till 10 o'clock.

Now we're only open till six.

One of the reasons we can close early

and do the same numbers as open

till 10 o'clock is this drive-through.

It's phenomenal how many people it turns out.

All these spots are numbered one through 90.

If it's not ready we'll park them

and we'll run it to them

in that golf cart right there.

[Sal] You got a pickup for Jack in there?

[Justin] Jack's almost ready.

Go ahead and park them

and we'll bring it right to him, Sal.

[Sal] I'm going to put Jack in number 39.

All right?

[Justin] Sounds good.

I'm going to check on it.

Yeah, so this works good when it's raining.

You know people don't want to get out their car.

Some people use it as a car hop.

It's 39.

So this must be Jack right here.

Jack? Yeah.

Alright man.

Roast beef. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Hey, have a good one man.

Easy as that.

[punchy music]

Alright, so it's two o'clock,

things have slowed down a little bit.

So I jumped up here in our prep kitchen

to make some Jambalaya and we're going

to make about 200 pounds

of chicken and sausage Jambalaya.

We used about 40 pounds of sausage.

This recipe came from a barbecue team I'm on,

called Silence of the Hams.

And it's for a fundraiser

called Hogs for the Cause.

We raise money for pediatric brain cancer

on a big barbecue team.

So we're going to fire this big boy up.

And what this is a tilt skillet

and it's basically just a big pot.

So when you fill it up, whatever you want to,

you can tilt it and get rid of the product

and easily put it in pans.

So first thing we do,

we're going to melt two pounds of butter.

So here in Creole cooking in Louisiana,

they call it the Holy Trinity,

like the Father Son, the Holy Ghost.

Your onion, your bell pepper, and your celery.

But then we throw the garlic in there too.

That makes it a little better, holier.

About 15 pounds here.

And now it's going to start coming together

when that fat starts rendering out

that sausage and getting into that veg

and it's very important you do it like this.

Cook your veg first, render that down

with the butter, then cook your sausages down,

render that down with the sauteed vegetables.

If you just throw it all in there,

fill it up with water, put your rice in,

you're not going to get that flavor

like if you were to do it in this step process.

'Cause what's happening right now,

that fat's getting cooked,

rendering out of that sausage

and soaking up in the vegetables.

And if you did it on and just boiled, boiled it

and cooked it without rendering,

that fat could just end up floating on the top

and not actually in it.

Me and my wife and my baby,

I can't just cook for us.

I always got to cook for a ton of people.

I love the production,

I love the volume aspect of it,

just 'cause I've been around it.

If I was cooking one little pan

of Jambalaya, it'd drive me crazy.

I don't even know if I'd know how to do it.

I got to cook in bulk.

And this right here is about 25 pounds of chicken.

This will serve about 350 people this will serve.

All right, so our Jambalaya is ready.

I mean, you can look at it

and tell this is some creamy Jambalaya.

I mean Jambalaya is like...

I mean it goes back centuries.

It's just like a inexpensive, delicious meal.

And if you look at most of the meals

that Louisiana's known for,

Jumbalaya, Gumbo, Po' Boys,

they're derived off something that's inexpensive,

delicious, and super filling.

Alright guys, it's about four o'clock.

As you can see, it's starting to slow down.

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.

See y'all next time.

[jazz music]

So I'm calling to check in with my wife.

She's in Lafayette with Josephine and our baby.

My wife is pretty much

in the same business as me.

Her family has a Po' Boy shop in Lafayette

called Olde Tyme Grocery.

Her dad started it.

So we met seven, eight years ago in a competition

for the best Po' Boy in the state of Louisiana.

If Becca comes down here

and she comes in the restaurant looking for me,

I could kind of tell she was looking

for more in the the roast beef.

Hello!

What are y'all doing?

Uh oh.

[Becca] Oh no, you're sad you don't get

to see your dad right now.

Is that what you're saying?

[Justin] This little baby is a handful.