2010 New Orleans Roadfood Festival – Part 1

We landed Wednesday at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport with plenty of time to stop for lunch before checking in to our hotel.  After driving to the Irish Channel, a New Orleans neighborhood settled long ago by Irish immigrants, we found Parasol’s Restaurant & Bar.  From the outside Parasol’s looks like thousands of other corner bars in thousands of other U.S. towns, and even upon entering there’s no hint of the wonders to be enjoyed here.  Pick up a beer or a Barq’s at the bar and continue on down a couple of steps to the small, ramshackle back room, where you will place your order at a pass-through to the kitchen. 
   
Find yourself a table; when your order is ready the cook will bring out the finest po-boys in New Orleans:

Pictured above is the classic roast beef po-boy.  You will find excellent roast beef po-boys all over town that are more generously filled, but none can compare to these richly flavored masterpieces.  Only in New Orleans would the stuff in this bread even be called roast beef.  It’s more like fall-apart pot roast in an intense, garlicky, beefy sauce.  We also got ourselves a fried shrimp po-boy:

And once again we assert that this is the finest shrimp po-boy in the Crescent City.  The shrimp crust has a touch of hot spice, and the shrimp themselves are moist and perfectly cooked, with shrimp flavor like no shrimp we can ever recall tasting.  Both sandwiches arrive fully dressed, which in New Orleans lingo means mayo, lettuce, tomato, and pickles.  Mayo on a goopy beef and gravy sandwich?  Yes, it works!  Of course the bread is that New Orleans classic, soft and light-textured within, crisp without, and very fresh.  It’s a perfect vehicle for, yet never overshadows, these fillings.  And what’s that on the wall next to our table?  None other than Jane and Michael:

After a little post-lunch consignment shopping by Sue we checked in to the Sheraton on Canal Street, where we had the most stunning view of the Mississippi from the floor-to-ceiling window in our 43rd-floor room.

Coming up… The Smith and Clevenger Show.