Parkway Bakery and Tavern
538 Hagan Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70119-4911
(504) 482-3047
11am-10pm, Tavern open later. Closed Tuesdays.
parkwaybakeryandtavernnola.com
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(editor's note: I eat regularly at Parkway, hence there are already a couple of articles here about the place, but since I don't have a full-blown review, it's time to do one.)
Parkway Bakery is one of my favorite po-boy places in New Orleans. I try to eat there every other week or so. Located on the corner of Hagan Avenue and Toulouse Street near Bayou St. John, Parkway Bakery was once actually a bakery shop. For decades Parkway made french bread in the back and sold po-boys at a diner counter in the front. It was your basic, working-class storefront. I first discovered Parkway in the mid-1970s, in my days at Brother Martin. The place was sold and closed up in the 1980s, and experienced a revival in the 1990s, becoming the restaurant and tavern it is now. The building got about 8' of water in the storm, but the owners re-built and came back strong.
The signature po-boy at Parkway is their roast beef (highly recommended). Time was that most po-boy places in town roasted their own beef and baked their own hams, but nowadays a lot of them just go with deli meats from distributors. Parkway still does their own, though, and it shows in the taste of both the meat and gravy. The photo is of the small size roast beef--yeah, I know it looks horrid, because it's a sloppy roast beef po-boy and the trip from the pick-up window back to where we were sitting didn't make it very photogenic. (The YouTube vid at the bottom has a better shot of the roast beef.)
Gotta wash that po-boy down with something, and for me, that's an Abita Amber.
Parkway's no slouch when it comes to seafood po-boys, either. This is a "half-and-half" sandwich (recommended), regular sized. It's half fried shrimp, half fried oyster. The daily special this trip was a "shrimp remoulade" po-boy, so I had them put the remoulade dressing on the half-and-half. It was a fascinating treat!
Since it's almost springtime, that means StrawBita - Abita's Strawberry Lager. I got the seasonal instead of the classic amber.
Even though I've been going to Parkway for years, I've never gotten anything but a po-boy. The special on "National Hot Pastrami Day" was a "pastrami reuben" on rye that was just fanststic. Parkway's pastrami po-boy is a regular menu item.
Of the various sides that Parkway offers, my fave is the potato salad (recommended). I usually don't get a side, however, if I'm ordering a regular-sized po-boy. The thing is big enough as it is! Still, a small sandwich and some fries or potato salad is great. They also do sweet potato fries, which are an interesting change of pace.
There are three distinct seating areas at Parkway. There's the the bar, up front, table seating inside behind the bar, and then table and counter seating outside on the patio. The bar was originally the smoking section, before the total ban on smoking in restaurants. There are also video poker machines in the bar.
Sitting outside on a nice day is the best!
Getting to Parkway - It's usually easy to park around the restaurant. If you don't mind a seven-block walk, you can take the Canal streetcar line to Jefferson Davis Parkway and walk down Jeff Davis from Canal, cross over to Hagan at the bayou, and you're there.
To sum up, here's a Katrinafilm video of Parkway:
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