Seither’s proves that a seafood place can make a killer roast beef po-boy
For many restaurants, the roast beef po-boy is, if not exactly the raison d’etre, a source of pride. It is the reason a sizable portion of its clientele show up much of the time. For others, it is a duty ably fulfilled for the privilege of flying the po-boy banner.
Seither’s is known for its seafood, but its roast beef po-boy has a devoted following.
And then there are the countless businesses that specialize in seafood but turn out roast beef po-boys anyway. It is difficult not to be suspicious of these sandwiches, perhaps because seafood is as far as you can get from beef without landing on a vegetable. Yet many of them are excellent.
Take the roast beef po-boy at Charlie’s Seafood, with its thick, flavorful, pale-gold gravy, or the one at River Pond Seafood on Airline Highway, overstuffed with caramelized morsels of meat that give the filling some traction and a deeper layer of flavor.
Last week at Zimmer’s Seafood in Gentilly, where the effort required to not order the shrimp may have actually burned calories, some gentlemen enjoying potato salad in the parking lot marveled at the speed with which I dispatched a toasted half-loaf (secret ingredient: sesame seeds) of roast beef. Garlic slivers slid out from between thick folds of meat and onto the butcher paper spread over the trunk of my car. (Zimmer’s has no tables.)
Hungry yet? I haven’t even mentioned RO’s Restaurant in Bucktown, the place founded decades ago by a family of Louisiana fishers, home to my favorite roast beef po-boy at the time this treasure hunt began.
In Harahan, Jason Seither has been serving roast beef po-boys since he opened Seither’s Seafood in 2004, but the po-boy didn’t really take off until after Hurricane Katrina. With supplies hard to come by, particularly local seafood, the po-boy became a more prominent part of the tiny seafood joint’s limited post-storm menu. Seither’s roast beef set the hook in some of his customers, who continued to order the sandwich even after his menu was fully restored.
“Most people that come around here are looking for a shrimp po-boy or an oyster po-boy or boiled crawfish,” he explained. “But we do have our customers who are religious about the roast beef.”
Seither admits he decided to cook his own sirloin tip roasts in part because it’s cheaper than buying pre-sliced and pre-cooked. The former car salesman and Harbor Seafood bartender is fond of what he calls “Crock Pot-style” cooking: “It’s slow and low and you just let it go.”
The meat comes in both strands and thick knobs, having all but absorbed onions and garlic, on toasted bread from Cartozzo’s, a Kenner bakery whose po-boy bread has a smooth skin and medium-soft crumb, like Leidenheimer French bread crossed with a hamburger bun.
The pot roast-style beef nicely counterbalances a tray of boiled crawfish in a low-on-the-hog version of surf-and-turf. Seither is so happy with the sandwich he’s considering introducing a modified version to larger audience next fall.
“We don’t put the carrots and potatoes in there,” he said of his pot roast recipe, “but maybe that would be good for a po-boy. Maybe we’ll do that for the next Po-boy Fest.”
Brett Anderson can be reached at 504.826.3353. Read more dining features at
nola.com/dining or nola.com/dining-guide. Follow him at twitter.com/BrettAndersonTP
Fish & Seafood with Bill & Sheila
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