Parkway Bakery & Tavern

Bayou St. John was the portage that made New Orleans possible — the waterway Native Americans used for more than a thousand years to connect the Mississippi to Lake Pontchartrain, the route French settlers claimed in the 1690s, the reason Bienville chose this bend of the river in 1718. You can sit on a picnic table at Parkway Bakery & Tavern and watch kayakers paddle the same water that founded the city while eating the roast beef debris po'boy against which every other po'boy in New Orleans is measured. Parkway opened in 1911 on Hagan Avenue. It closed, reopened, flooded in Katrina, and reopened again. The roast beef debris — shredded, gravy-soaked, messy — earns the line you'll find at lunch. The sandwich itself traces its name to the 1929 streetcar strike, when the Martin brothers served free sandwiches to striking workers they called poor boys. President Obama ate here in 2010 during a post-BP oil spill visit. The shop is open daily at 538 Hagan Avenue, Mid-City. Expect a line at lunch. Bring the sandwich to the bayou.