I have written in this blog before about the New Orleans tendency to do something once, and then declare it a yearly tradition. Last year, there was a Po Boy Preservation Festival held on Oak Street (subtitled deliciously, "Save Our Sandwich!") and it was the first time it had ever been held, so of course it was immediately dubbed "1st Annual Po Boy Preservation Festival." That makes Sunday's iteration of the festival the 2nd Annual -- so now it's permanent, a regular tradition, and we gotta hold one every year. Yeah you right.
The first po boy fest was a victim of its own gigantic success -- approximately 100,000 people smushed into a few blocks of Oak Street -- so this year, the festival's physical length was extended all the way to Joliet and beyond (the second stage was at least a block beyond Joliet), and was broadened onto a half-block of several cross streets. In addition, logistics were improved by providing barricaded-off areas to stand in line without clogging up the flow on Oak Street. More food and drink booths were added to improve wait time.
Big Man and I arrived shortly before 2 pm; the fest had begun at 12 noon. (We had a meeting at church that prevented our getting there right at opening.) The line for charbroiled oysters -- not, strictly speaking,a po boy, but they did give you French bread to soak up the amazing juices -- was really long, so we decided to fortify ourselves before tackling that. This year's fest had an additional innovation to encourage grazing -- tasting-size portions for only $2-$3. Great idea!
We started with tasting sizes of the hot sausage, melted cheese and special sauce po boys (mmm, what was in that sauce??), and shared a plate of what was advertised (correctly, as it turned out) "serious stuffed shrimp." We moved on to crawfish sausage po boys, which we munched on while waiting in the charbroiled oyster line, which actually moved faster than we had feared. (Drago's had prepared well, and had boxes filled with trays of already-shucked oysters, ready to lay on the hot grill while one grill man dotted them with garlic butter and another threw handfuls of grated cheese at them.) We stood on the sidewalk and people-watched the throngs teeming by in both directions as we let the oysters cool enough to eat without burning our tongues and palates, and shared a conversation with a couple from New York, who were marveling at all of it -- the day, the gorgeous weather, the incredible food, the music, the way people here talk so easily to strangers and think nothing of it.
As we stood there, reveling in the oysters and the ambience, we heard brass band music, and soon we could see the top of a shiny tuba above the heads of the crowd. The Pinstripe Brass Band made their way slowly through the big crowd in the middle of the street, and (amazingly!) a large group of secondliners, waving familiar paper-wrapped loaves of Leidenheimer's po boy bread in the air instead of handkerchieves. (There was an actual Leidenheimer's booth up Oak Street that we hadn't seen yet.) It was so cool and so funny, people all around us were laughing and taking pictures with cameras and cell phones. Now, I've seen everything, I thought to myself.
Music was terrific at the fest, as if someone had thought that the fabulous food would not be enough to bring people in. One stage held Rebirth Brass Band, blowing their hearts out, a big crowd of folks of all colors and all ages dancing hard in front of the stage. At the other end of the street, at the Carrollton corner, young Amanda Shaw was charming and sweet and powerful and sexy as all get out. It was impossible at either stage to keep your head from nodding and your feet from tapping, if you weren't already dancing. Great stuff.
We came to a booth that said "Original One-Handed BBQ Shrimp Po Boy" and that sounded so intriguing we had to stop. Turns out they had sliced a po boy loaf in half horizontally, and then scooped out most of the soft white part from the inside of the uncut half. Then they took fresh hot BBQ shrimp -- already peeled. of course -- and stuffed that inside the 1/2 loaf, the juices from the spicy "BBQ sauce" (it's not THAT kind of BBQ sauce, those of you folks reading this from "away") soaking into the surrounding bread, but not so much that it fell apart. You could, as we did, quite literally walk away, holding the BBQ shrimp po boy with only one hand and not lose a drop of the sauce or one single shrimp. It was one of those brilliant ideas that makes you say to yourself, "Why didn't *I* think of that??"
At about this point, we were feeling pretty stuffed, so it was with chagrin that we came to a booth staffed by attractive Vietnamese-New Orleans women, whose sign advertised "Vietnamese meatball po boy." Wow! The marriage of 2 cultures! Our favorite! We loved both the idea and the look of it, but we were way too full by then to eat any. (Next year!) But it is so good to know that the familiar and traditional New Orleans po boy is being enriched and expanded by these New Orleanians of Vietnamese descent.
We found the crowd to be really large and really friendly, and very navigable, except for the block of Oak Street that holds the Maple Leaf, where a clump of people had stopped in front of the bar and thus impeded the flow of the traffic. The longest line was the one for the charbroiled oysters, and it moved pretty fast. We did not have any real trouble getting around, but then, neither of us is crowd-averse or get panic attacks from claustrophobia, so maybe you can't judge from Big Man and me. The craft booths looked good but I don't know if they made any money -- seemed like most folks were there to Save Our Sandwich and not buy stuff they couldn't eat or drink.
As we walked back to the car, we passed a hibiscus bush in full glorious scarlet bloom, and we agreed that we'd always want to live in this magical place where tropical flowers bloom and pretty girls wear sundresses past mid-November, and where a major street festival can be held to save the sacred tradition of our local sandwich.
Preserve our po boys! Save our sandwich! And see you there next year.
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