Po-Boys at Parasol's

Parasol's Restaurant and Bar, Constance and Third Streets in Da Channel

Parasol's Restaurant and Bar
Constance and Third Streets in the Irish Channel
****

There are flyers all around Parasol's these days that say: "Parasol's-It's not just for St. Patrick's Day Anymore!" This is, of course, an allusion to the extremely-popular block party that takes place annually on March 17^th on the corner of Constance and Third. It's one of those events, like the parades in Boston and New York, where everyone gets to be Irish for little while. There's a distinctly New Orleans flavor to St. Pat's at Parasol's, which is to be expected in a place where there are more Yats than Irishmen, but that's a whole different story. It's May, and I didn't go to Parasol's for green beer. I went for a po-boy.

And a better po-boy you won't easily find. The last time I visited Parasol's was back at the beginning of the year. I was working on a Windows NT network for the local ComputerLand at a client site in the Uptown area. Heading down Tchoupitoulas St. back to the Irish Channel only took a couple of minutes, so I hit Parasol's almost every day I was in the neighborhood. In typical fashion, my travels around town for ComputerLand, VNO, and other stuff took me in different directions since then, so when I got the notion to hop the ferry from Gretna yesterday, the first thing that came to mind for something to do on the other side was lunch at Parasol's.

Parasol's has that timeless New Orleans feel about the place. It's a wood-frame building, with the bar in the front and the restaurant in the back. The restaurant is about six feet higher above the ground than the bar section of the building, so that when you lean through the little service window connecting the bar and restaurant , you're looking down at the top of the bartender's forehead. That's OK, he'll hand up your Barq's with no problem. The restaurant is L-shaped, with the long part running parallel to the bar on the Constance St. side, and the short section turning onto Third St. I walked up to the Dutch door in the back of the restaurant that leads to the kitchen to place my order.

Deciding what to order at Parasol's can be difficult. They do a great roast beef, but man does not live by roast beef alone. Their fried seafood is also excellent, good cornmeal breading, and fried to perfection. Their hot sausage is also good, as is their cheesburger. I went traditional, however, and got the roast beef. Now Part 2 of the tough decision: do I get a regular-sized (6") sandwich and some potato salad, or do I go with the large (11") po-boy and skip the side order? I wanted the bread, so that meant the large. I gave my order to the little old lady on the other side of the door (as others came and went bringing out the food to diners). The sandwich cost about $5.25. I paid and turned around to walk over to the service window leading into the bar to order a soft drink. I ordered a Barq's, forgetting as usual to ask for Abita Root Beer to see if what the po-boy experience is like with that drink.

The front dining area was packed, so I moved off into the bottom part of the l-shape, into the overflow dining room. This little area has about six tables. It's got its own TV, but that was turned off, so I sort of cocked an ear towards the other room to catch the news while I waited. There's not much in the way of decor to admire at Parasol's. The walls are white with a few posters of New Orleans stuff hung around the rooms. There's a framed piece from the T-P on St. Pat's day on the wall, and the flyers announcing the place's new, extended hours were all over the room as well. It wasn't more than about 5 minutes before the lady was looking around for me to bring my sandwich to the table. The large po-boy is cut into three sections, making about 1 ½ of what a normal sandwich would be. In addition to the usual condiments required for a quality po-boy place (salt, pepper and Crystal Hot Sauce), Parasol's has also added two interesting new items: the green jalapeno hot sauce from Tabasco, and table-size bottles of Tony Cachere's Creole Seasoning, that salt-and-cayenne combination that is becoming a staple in more and more New Orleans kitchens. One of the nice things about a three-part po-boy is that I can experiment and be a purist all in the same meal.

It's still the bread, stupid.

Apologies to Carville and Clinton's war room, but it's the only way to make the point. The best po-boys in New Orleans are the ones made with good, hot French bread. Not that stuff from the grocery store or (gasp) Subway, but from Binder's, Leidenheimer's, or Gendusa's. I'm one of those folks who wants the bread heated before the po-boy is assembled, so Parasol's (along with Commerce on Camp or Mumfrey's on Common) is my kind of place. The bread isn't hot, just warm and crunchy. There's a chemistry with the gravy that's indescribable. I promise that when taste technology is possible over the 'net, Virtually New Orleans will be the first web site in town with it. :-) I gobbled up the first part of the three in purist fashion, just a little Crystal. Parasol's understands the second important rule of po-boys as well:

It's not the meat, but the gravy that makes a roast beef po-boy. The flavor is in the gravy, simple as that. Oh, sure, you can't have grisly junk for meat, but the gravy really is what separates a mediocre po-boy from a classic. Look at what is for many the ultimate po-boy: a debris po-boy from Mother's. Debris is the meat that falls off the roast and sits in the pan with the gravy. No nice slices of beef, just pieces and chunks. The gravy not only picks up the slack, but rather makes the sandwich. Parasol's roast beef po-boy is like this, too. Combine good meat, even better gravy (lots of garlic), fresh lettuce and tomatoes, and a dollop of Blue Plate mayo smeared on both halves of the bread, and it's tough to find a better New Orleans lunch. After that first section, I tried the Tony Cachere's instead of the Crystal. Not bad. The extra little bit of garlic power in the seasoning made for a change of pace, and the cayenne is a bit more concentrated in the powder than in the hot sauce. 'Twas interesting. I returned to the purist form for the third section. I just couldn't bring myself to try that green hot sauce. The color is so terribly unaapetizing.

Having finished my sandwich, I lingered a few minutes over my Barq's, listening to the conversations from the other room. It always seems like the people who eat lunch at Parasol's are folks who don't live in the Channel, but their mommas and grandmommas did. Some still have an uncle or aunt still in the neighborhood, and feel some ties, and coming up to Constance and Third is a way to keep those ties strong. Let's hope that doesn't change for a long time. I smiled, drained my glass, and decided I had enough time to go haunt Lafayette #1 for a few minutes before returning to the ferry landing.

Read our article on Parasol's in the Naborhood Guide.

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