The Perfect Poboy

By Billy Curtright

Cuisine editor

When talking about poboys around town, or as Emeril Lagasse likes to say “poor boy”, we’re not talking about the fellas low on cash and digging ditches. We’re talking about the Gulf Coast version of a sub, hero or grinder style of sandwich. The main point to keep in mind is that it all revolves around the bread. Use anything other than fresh French bread, and you are already digging yourself into a black hole that even the finest ingredients cannot salvage.

The obvious reference point for poboys is New Orleans where they measure the quality of the sandwich by how far the drippings or gravy run down your forearm during eating. Dating back to the 1920s during a streetcar strike, the poboy sandwich was invented at Martin’s Restaurant as a way to feed the poverty-stricken streetcar workers. For only a nickel, Bennie and Clovis Martin created a potato sandwich by filing French bread with French fries and wetting it down with roast beef gravy and any scraps of meat that might have found their way into it.

The pinnacle of the poboy starts and ends with places like Mother’s or Uglesich’s in the Crescent City or even closer to home at Li’l Ray’s in Waveland, Miss. Mention a poboy around Mobile 10 years ago, and it was hard to get excited, due to the poor quality of the bread the majority of restaurants were serving. Today’s local poboys have really kicked it up a notch using both fresh and unique ingredients. It also helps having a New Orleans distributor like Gambino’s Bakery delivering the fresh French bread this far east.

I could have listed 30 other places that do poboys, but who wants to read about average places with one or two stars? These places listed below are known for their poboys, which all range from $6 to $8 bucks, and you need to know who is king.

Big E’s

263 St. Francis St. – 694-0585

This downtown deli has all kinds of salads and made-to-order sandwiches, but everyone ends up getting a poboy down there. They have a shrimp & sausage version, but the Downtowner is their headliner. This jewel is served on panini-style grilled French bread with grilled shrimp and a homemade lemon-herb mayonnaise. Good flavor on this one that has to be Mobile’s most unique poboy. Throw in the excellent marinated black bean & cobb salad side dish and the most pleasant owner/manager in town, Big E’s is hard to beat. For some strange reason, Bob Marley music has been playing every time I have been there. 3 – stars

Roshell’s

2904 Spring Hill Ave. – 479-4614

Roshell’s is a true throwback to the old diners that are too few and far between. Located in the Midtown area of Crichton, grill smoke hits your face when you enter the front diner area, or you can wonder to the wood-paneled back room with red, checkered tablecloths and mounted marlin. There is always a good crowd there made up of hospital and construction workers. Their best two poboys are the oyster & shrimp version and the “Combo” which is made with ham, roast beef, cheese and gravy. Both are huge, messy and excellent. The key to these is the fresh bread brought in from New Orleans. The bread has the soft texture on the inside and the fresh, flaky crust on the outside. The Combo is a no-brainer, and the seafood loaf is also solid except the shrimp can be rather small and lack taste when eaten alone without the dressing. 4 stars

Pollman’s

3 Locations – 750 S. Broad – 438-1511 / 31 N. Royal – 438-2261 / 4464 Old Shell Rd – 342-8546

The required lunch when fishing out in the bay as a kid was always a Pollman ham & cheese poboy. It still is today. Add some Zapp’s crawtator chips, a big dill pickle and couple of Cokes, you cannot beat it. That is until you compare it to the other poboys on this page. The Pollman’s poboy is really in the hoagie family – served cold and portable. While the bread can get tough after a while, there is no better picnic sandwich around. 2 1/2 stars

Orleans Poboys

3 Locations – 3242 Dauphin St. – 478-4203 / 4681 Airport Blvd – 380-1504 / 5616 Three Notch Road – 660-0001

The atmosphere is fairly depressing at any of the strip mall locations of this New Orleans-based chain. Also, Orleans Poboys always wins the Mobile Register Readers Choice Award for the city’s best poboy. So this place already has two strikes against it before you even place your order. But I was dramatically surprised when I tried two of their sandwiches. The “Joe Don Special” is really the main deal here – roast beef, ham, Swiss cheese and gravy. I measured the gravy / dressing juice running down my forearm to an inch above the elbow. The other good one is the classic fried shrimp poboy. While the shrimp have a not-from-around-here flavor, the fresh French bread more than makes up for it. Oh yea, the size of the large poboy is colossal. Unless you have been stranded in the bay for a week, get the small ($3.99) with fries. 3 1/2 stars

The Dew Drop Inn

1808 Old Shell Rd. – 473-7872

Everything about the place oozes “old school,” from the excellent turnip greens to the Cokes in the glass bottles to the Midtown location. Forget about the red-pink hot dogs. Discard the oversized, homemade onion rings (maybe not – you better get those). The best poboy in Mobile is their crabmeat omelet poboy. As always, get the sandwich fully dressed and go to town! Tiny chunks of lump crabmeat and green onion cooked in a “drop omelet” and served on an excellent French bread loaf is as basic as it gets. If only they used the same bread Roshell’s does, it would earn the first 5-star rating ever given by this Lagniappe critic. 4 1/2 stars

Rousso’s

166 S. Royal St. – 433-3322

This place has a great location, great old warehouse atmosphere and friendly, down-home service. It is all downhill from there. The fried soft-shell crab poboy (also called a “spider burger”) I had recently is truly a thing of horrors. Served on a split-top bun that tasted like it had been toasted earlier that morning, the sandwich was served on wilted romaine lettuce, poor tomatoes and a bottled tarter sauce. The actual soft-shell crab had been so poorly cleaned that the yellow eggs squirted out. Overall, it was not crispy and had a slightly funky taste. I hoped my lovely companion’s poboy was a notch above, and it was, but ever so slightly. Her fried shrimp version was basically the same as mine – just substitute frozen shrimp nuggets. To top it all off, Rousso’s has the most expensive poboys around at $8.99. At least I got to take home my paper placemat depicting a map of the United States of Dixie. 1/2 star

Wintzell’s

2 locations – 605 Dauphin St. – 432-4605 / 6700 Airport Blvd. – 341-1111

A decade ago, this would have been the last place to go for a great poboy. I still remember the chewy bread to this day, along with the over-fried small oysters. Let me tell you, they have come a long way since then. Wiintzell’s has raised the level of the French bread they use, but the oysters are the real story. These bi-valves are the perfect, medium-sized delicacies fried to a crispy, golden brown that you would expect from an oyster house going strong since 1938. Order it with the cole slaw and an almost frozen draft beer, and you’ll be completely satisfied. 3 stars

Billy Curtright is Lagniappe cuisine editor. E-mail him at bcurtright@lagniappemobile.com

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