Photos du Jour: The Parkway Bakery and Tavern

The other day a friend of mine whom I work with needed to head over to Mid-City to "touch base" with the work crew currently working on his house. Over six months later my friend is still dealing with the insurance company and still fighting to receive acceptable financial settlements, but despite this has charged ahead and has his house well on the road to recovery. His home sits an area that was engulfed with 5+ feet of water at street level, but because the house was raised three feet off the ground got a little over two feet interior inundation. Also, the turn-of-the-century house is two stories, so he was able to recover all possessions upstairs. He and his wife (and child) plan to be in the house by May. (Look for a future post on my friend's story.) See Chris Rose's most recent column accurately assessing/describing Mid-City New Orleans.

So he had to run out to Mid-City and he asked me if I wanted to go along with him during our lunch hour. I was wavering but then he suggested we eat lunch at the Parkway Bakery and Tavern near Bayou St. John-- I was in. The Parkway Bakery was a place I had heard nothing but good things about but which I had never been to since it's resurrection in 2004. The place is the classic New Orleans neighborhood po-boy restaurant (such as Domilisie's Uptown) located in a typical New Orleans corner store building. The place did get about 2.5 feet of water but reopened in mid-December. We both ordered the signature sandwich--the hot roast beef po-boy--with his dressed and mine plain, and the sandwich lived up to all the buzz (using Leidenheimer Bread I am sure). Although windy and ugly overcast we sat in the outdoor seating area out back and despite the lack of a funky water line on the Parkway building--obviously power-washed off --a thick brown line was glaringly obvious on an adjacent house. I think I may have found a new favorite po-boy . . .