The Art and Science of Jambalaya: A Louisiana Tradition

As I stand in our prep kitchen, surrounded by the familiar sights and smells of Creole cuisine, I begin to prepare for the next day's service. The recipe we're about to make is one that's near and dear to my heart - jambalaya. This iconic dish has been a staple of Louisiana cuisine for centuries, and its rich flavors and hearty portions have made it a favorite among locals and visitors alike.

As I start by melting 2 pounds of butter in our large skillet, also known as a tilt Skillet, I'm reminded of the importance of cooking with Creole trinity - onion, bell pepper, celery, and garlic. These ingredients form the foundation of many classic Louisiana dishes, including jambalaya. By sautéing them together, we bring out their natural sweetness and depth of flavor, setting the stage for the rest of the recipe.

Next, I add 15 pounds of chicken to the skillet, followed by 40 pounds of sausage - a key component of traditional jambalaya. As the mixture simmers, the fat from the sausage begins to render, infusing the dish with its rich, meaty flavor. This step is crucial, as it allows the flavors to meld together and intensify over time. I take a moment to appreciate the aroma wafting from the skillet, knowing that this is what sets our jambalaya apart from others.

Now, the fun part - adding the rice! We're making about 200 pounds of chicken and sausage jambalaya, which will serve around 350 people. This recipe was passed down to me from a barbecue team called Silence of the Hams, where I met my wife who shares my passion for Creole cuisine. The team's fundraiser, "Hogs for the Calls," raises money for Pediatric brain cancer research, and we're proud to be a part of it.

As I continue to cook the jambalaya, I think about the production aspect of running a restaurant. With our drive-thru, we can serve hundreds of people in a short amount of time, making us more efficient than ever before. Our tilt Skillet is particularly useful for this purpose, as it allows us to easily portion out food and reduce waste.

It's not just about the quantity, though - it's also about the quality. We're committed to using only the freshest ingredients, sourced locally whenever possible. This attention to detail sets us apart from other restaurants and ensures that every dish that leaves our kitchen is truly exceptional.

As I check on the jambalaya's progress, I'm reminded of the importance of patience in cooking. This dish takes time to develop its rich flavors, just like life itself. By taking the time to cook it slowly and deliberately, we're rewarded with a culinary experience that's both comforting and exciting.

Now, as the day winds down and our restaurant slows to a gentle pace, I take a moment to appreciate the beauty of jambalaya. It's a dish that's full of history, flavor, and community - a true Louisiana tradition. And as I look around at my team, I know that we're not just cooking for ourselves or our customers - we're cooking for each other, too.

A Call with My Wife

As the afternoon wears on, I take a break to call in with my wife, who's currently in Lafayette with their baby, Josephine. We met 7-8 years ago at a barbecue competition where she came to support her family's pboy shop, Old Time Grocery. Her dad started the business, and now it's one of the most beloved institutions in Louisiana.

We chat about our respective days, sharing stories about our experiences in the kitchen. My wife is always busy with her own projects, from developing new recipes to managing our family's restaurants. I admire her dedication and hard work, knowing that she's just as passionate about Creole cuisine as I am.

As we talk, Josephine starts to get restless, demanding attention from her mother. We laugh and joke about the challenges of parenting a tiny human who's always on the go. It's moments like these that remind me of the importance of family and community in our work - whether it's cooking for a crowd or simply enjoying a quiet evening at home.

The End of Another Busy Day

As I wrap up my call with my wife, I take a moment to appreciate the end of another busy day. Our drive-thru has served hundreds of people, and our jambalaya has been a hit. We've made memories, we've created experiences, and we've brought joy to those who have dined with us.

As I look around at our team, I know that we're not just cooks or servers - we're artists, too. We use food as a way to connect people, to share stories, and to create community. And in this moment, I'm grateful for the chance to do what we love every day, surrounded by the sights, sounds, and flavors of Creole cuisine.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe pooy is important to the City of New Orleans because New Orleans made it something that was just rooted New Orleans history that kind of bubbled up from the streets turned into like everyday life people have to do it they have to get their P boy fixed Parkway has been here for over a hundred years and it's outlasted generation I've been here 20 years and I don't want to do anything else so I I wake up on a Saturday morning I know we're going to put out 1,500 or 2,000 sandwiches I don't sweat it New Orleans comes to me every single day and I get a chance to feed hey I'm Justin Kennedy general manager of Parkway Baker and Tavern and you are in my apartment right above the restaurant it's about 700 a.m. I have two bread delivery trucks bringing 700 loaves of bread and all I got to do is walk right down these stairs and meet them so I get a double order of bread on Saturday so what we have coming right now seven on the dot this is John jendusa and they invented the PoBoy loaf for the street car Strikers back in 1929 what's going on man what's up how you doing good to see you ready for a busy day I'm going to give you a hand with it oh let it fool you this Bread's not light backing up is lanimer they've been around since the 1800s they're one of the original Bakers in the city they didn't invent the PoBoy but they make it right too so we built it to 70 each one's 10 so that's that's 700 loaves so each loaf will do six Smalls or three larges we're looking to do close to 3,000 sandwiches between today Saturday and tomorrow Sunday what's up Andrew how are you man to why I'm doing this by myself right now that's one thing about living here being on top of the business because look my crew Works they get here at 800 in the morning they here till 700 at night you know so they're working close to 10 hours 11 hours a day so I'm here in the morning to catch some odds and ends when I crack this baby open look at that looks like cotton candy melt in your mouth when you load it up with shrimp oysters catfish sloppy roast beef pile it high this just disintegrates and melts in your mouth so you're not eating heavy dense bread but it's strong enough to hold it that's the beauty of new orans French bread the Great Depression hit a lot of people street car drivers when these guys weren't getting paid they went on strike and former street car conductors Ben and Clovis Martin and said look you come down to the Martin Brothers grocery store you show your badge we'll feed you we'll feed our poor boys and they were baking French bread as well but the bread was wide in the middle and skinny on the ends like a football John jendusa came up with a 36in loaf back in 1929 consistently the same size from beginning to end and this is what they still bake today you see it this morning by the end of the day all this will be gone and about an hour I got two team members coming to slice this up get it ready for service but uh now I don't want to be surprised so we're going to go look and see what kind of orders we have for today on online and arties you're in parkway's main bar this is original OG bar it's been around since like the opening day which was like around 1911 this is the most Sal after place to sit in the restaurant there's a lot of people watching so we probably have about one two we probably have about six dining spaces so right here uh we have a couple small ones a couple of bigger ones between uh you know all these spaces we have here we probably have 300 seats so it's a little early but sometimes a lot of orders come through online and we have parties that come through and big orders so I like to go check those first so this is what we got going on for today looks like we got 30 people that's an 11:00 that's no big deal uh we got a 12:00 noon pickup order for Alex that's about uh 20 sandwiches that's no big deal and then we got another 30 uh at 11:45 we could probably put that out in about 10 15 minutes if we have 30 sandwich and they're all Shrimp Po Boys I'll tell everybody on the line hey everybody make five shrimp and we can get that 30 sandwich done in 4 minutes or 5 minutes this is in November we have like a wedding reception so we're also going to go to the office and we're going to check the online orders so this office is pretty big my cousin has a spot my mother has a spot my uncle has a spot we got about 20 orders you can see what's going on ahead of time but the ticket will fire 15 minutes so even though there's one already in for 11:55 it's going to fire at140 I look for the ones like this one this is $181 so you want to make sure you might have a little bit more than 15 minutes to get that out I'll go ahead and print it out and have it ready for the team to know that's coming in all right so it's 8:15 and we're about to go pick up one of our employees we're going to get Mr pcel Ford he's been with us for about 12 years and and he is at the least to say a character he's about 73 and he just had a kidney transplant and I donated kidney to my brother about 10 years ago so you know I know what he's been going through and uh he's back to work as a GM look it's not my responsibility to pick staff members up and bring them to work and I and I don't do that but Parkway is nothing without the people in it making it happen every day you want to make sure your people are taking care of and I do my best you know I'm not perfect but I do my best to make sure my team knows I love them I care about them CU we're going to come up here and take a left and we're going to land right on Frenchman Street and it's music Club after music Club after music clubs you're sitting in the front man my name is pel Ford the latest call me pel I call him Ford an old ass man what you say when I call your old ass man live to get old that's all you got to do live to get old just keep on living you'll get old one day and I seen Parkway I said let me go over there and put an application in I said well I'm going tell you something I'm one of the best fried Cooks in the city my name is well known all over the quarters so uh I went to work and kenned say you know what fol I was there for about 2 or three years frying I was a little younger and he said you're the best fried cook that don't came through the door I say I appreciate that but uh all jokes aside you got to pay me like that but uh like I say it's a nice place to work for and I appreciate everything you know done for me you know man we open in 30 minutes man let's get to work stop all that talking man well you see what I'm saying about it all right gentlemen I'mma holl at y'all later y'all stay cool go in there and psych them up get them all happy for all right B I hear you thank you man so it's about 9:00 it's about an hour before we open the doors about to go prep some roast beef Miss D we're constantly prepping throughout the day in these back kitchens to feed the main one to get the sandwiches out and you're in the roast beef kitchen so that's all we do in here we'll do uh roast beef and we'll cook about 400 lb a day so this roast beef is for the signer sandwich at Parkway Bakery the roast beef pboy smothered in gravy put on a sandwich with mayo that French bread I showed you toasted just right can't beat it I mean look at this this is chuck roast I mean we do about 2,000 lb a week close to a ton a week and chuck roast is very fatty there's grains going all over the place it's best known and best uses for hamburgers but in this case if you cook it low and slow all that fat melts away into the gravy and you're left with flavor we cook this roast beef we put it in at about 6:00 yesterday evening and we take it out about 8 :00 in the morning so about 14 to 16 hours this roast comes out just like this where it's just I mean literally falling apart even though I can take my hands and just pull it apart that's not how you want to serve it when you're pulling it right now all this moisture is leaving the meat and it's going to dry it out so you want to you want it to cool solidly together slice it cool put that gravy on it put it on the line it just makes a sloppy great sandwich I'm going to put this on the this pan and if wheel it to the cooler cat that door it for a young fella and you see here's our chilled from the day before so this chilled roast beef is going back to the kitchen we just left to be sliced you see how nice that breaks and nice and tender it's not stringy or pulley like if was to pull it while it was hot and all that moisture is still in the slice because I never cracked the meat open when it was finished cooking so the roast beef pboy was just about the original pboy invented for the Striking street car workers they took the scraps of meat in the gravy and put fried potatoes on the French bread and we still have that sandwich today it's actually a pretty good seller we call it the street car poor boy so this is the thin IU that came off the meat meat before we thicken it so this is the gravy before thicken oven set to 350° throw that in there for about 30 35 minutes and it's that Parkway roast beef everybody loves so this is just one but we have a whole bunch in this oven that Brandon put in that's about to come out so when Brandon takes all this roast out he's going to head over into the main kitchen that we pumped the sandwiches out of he's going to fill all six sandwich makers Hot Wells up with that roast beef and barbecue beef and gravy to get ready for service so the roast beef's all on the line service underway here so I'm going to get in the kitchen start making some sandwiches all right y'all it's 10:30 it's not quite lunch rush yet but things are starting to kick off and right now is a good time where a lot of my employees go take their breaks before the lunch rush hits so I usually jump in here and help out all right so this is the main kitchen all the sandwiches are made this section the kitchen goes from the main register prints to this ticket and everything is on the line from the roast beef barbecue beef meatballs shrimp every sandwich maker Can Make Every Sandwich there's no certain station so that's what's a beauty about it that's how we can get them out a lot of kitens have a lot of different stations like a seafood station or a sliced meat station but here there's so many people in this tight spot it's faster and it's just more efficient every person can turn and do everything for one ticket they're not waiting on someone else to complete their order you know each sandwich maker probably does a few hundred sandwiches in a span we have one person dedicated to frying shrimp I mean this is a 20ft hood you can see about 15t of it is just dedicated to shrimp and that's all Reggie's doing today they'll probably fry about 500 lbs of shrimp today there's no wet batter there's no egg wash we take that natural salty juice from the shrimp and that's light corn flour a little salt pepper Cayenne in there and when he drops a basket I mean he's dropping about five or six sandwiches right there so right now I'm making a shrimp pboy dressed this is one of our high volume most popular sandwiches dressed is lettuce tomato mayo and pickle you want to make sure you get it corner to corner so we got this fried shrimp we're going to put that on there and our most popular sandwiches are not pre-measured or pre-weighed like a a burger patty or some deli meat that's weighed it's made by hand and by feel we don't want to measure it and have a little cup and put a cup of shrimp in there that's skimpy and if stuff's falling out that's fine just wrap it up so what we have here is the OG the signature roast beef and they want it dressed I mean that's pretty much the standard tomato pickle and then this one here's your roast beef I mean that's what we saw this morning put that on it and then when I put that gravy I was telling you about you put that on top of it and it just look it just latches on to it look how delicious that looks so this one's going to be the James Brown and it's pepper jack cheese but the key to this one is not just putting the cheese on there we run this cheese in the broiler you can see it's nice and melty and that little step right there makes a huge difference so this is the barbecue be then we're going to run it down with this shrimp it's like a poor man steaking Lobster so the next thing we're going to do is put some more barbecue sauce on it and then the last thing is we're going to put that spicy mayo on it I mean don't tell me that don't look good and that's the James Brown award winning this boy right here I mean yeah you're looking at like 28 o right here so this is a good pound and a half right here in your belly all my team's about done taking their breaks so I'm gonna finish these few tickets right here and when they're done I'm going jump on Expo it's 12:30 we in the heart of the kitchen where it goes down I'm battling out with my team it's mid- lunch rush it's real busy so Expediting that Parkway is a little different from other restaurant expediter the Expo is is dropping the fries the Expo is dropping all the call Food burgers chicken sausage grilled cheeses hot hams hot turkeys and then that put it together all the sides and fries and sell it out the window most expediters are on the other side of the line grabbing plates putting things together in this sense the exped is actually behind the line cooking and working with the team it's like a hybrid of an expediter and line cook in one so we like to keep a a 10 to 15 minute ticket time which it looks like that's about where we're at right now so behind each line You'll see a grill like right now we got a burger about done what's on that burger American American yeah so this Grill is very important you know we're listening to the calls you got to be very very attentive when you're one of our expediters if you're not a attention to detail kind of person you won't last being a Parkway Bakery I used to be my spot was right there where Manny is I used to be on that spot all day every day you know when I was a kid I've worked every spot in in this kitchen my favorite spot is Expo but I'm looking out at this ticket board I'm making sure everybody's keeping up I'm making sure the fry man's keeping up the bread person's keeping up the flow is going right here you need one more right yeah mostly watching the flow watching the ticket time looks like my crew has it over here so we're going to go check some other spaces in a restaurant and uh the online and the outdoors so it's about 1 :30 and went on a pre-order drive-thru you can see way in the distance over there that young man that's s he's like the parking lot matri D guiding all the online and phone traffic basically this came out of Co when it was all to go and no one could come in we had the space to develop this this uh to go system that evolved into something that's like epic you order on the online app from your house he's miked up to the kitchen and that order is ready and they're going to pull him up and then Adam's going to come out here right to the blinking light and they're going to get their food and go I don't see a lot of my regulars anymore I didn't know what happened to them like where are my regulars if you go hang in that Booth with s that's where they are they're coming through the drive-thru it's like a whole another restaurant we've opened up doing this and we'll serve hundreds of people we used to be open till 10:00 now we're only open till 600 one of the reasons we can close early and do the same numbers is open till 10:00 is this drive-thru it's phenomenal how many people it turns out all these spots are numbered 1 through 90 if it's not ready we'll park them and we'll run it to them in that golf cart right there got a pick up for Jack in there Jack's almost ready go ahead and park them and uh we'll bring it right to him s I'm going put jack in number 39 all right sounds good I'm going check on it yeah so this works good when it's raining you know people don't want to get out their car some people use it as a car hop 39 so this must be Jack right here Jack yeah all right man roast beef appreciate it thank you hey have a good one man easy as that all right so it's 2:00 things have slowed down a little bit so I jumped up here in our prep kitchen to make some jumbalaya and we're going to make about 200 lb of chicken and sausage jumbalaya we used about 40 lbs of sausage this recipe came from a barbecue team I'm on called Silence of the hams and it's for a fundraiser called hogs for the calls we raise money uh for Pediatric brain cancer on the big barbecue team so we're going to fire this big boy up and what this is is a tilt Skillet and it's basically just a big pot so when you fill it up whatever you want to you can tilt it and get rid of the product and easily put it in pans so first thing going to do we're going to melt 2 lbs of butter so here in Creole cooking in Louisiana they call it the Holy Trinity like the father son the Holy Ghost your onion your bell pepper and your celery but then we throw the garlic in there too that makes it a little bit Holier about 15 lb here and now it's going to start coming together when that fat starts rending out that sausage and getting into that veg and it's very important you do it like this cook your veg first render that down with the butter then cook your sauses down render that down with the sauteed vegetables if you just throw it all in there fill it up with water put your rice in you're not going to get that flavor like if you were to do it in this step process cuz what's happening right now that Fat's getting cooked rendering out of that sausage and soaking up in the vegetables and if you did it on and just boiled boiled it and uh you know cooked it without rendering you know that fat could just end up floating on the top and not actually in it me and my wife and my baby I can't just cook for us I always got to cook for a ton of people I love the production I love the volume aspect of it just cuz I've been around it if I was cooking one little pan of jumble ey it drive me crazy I don't even know if I'd know how to do it I got a cook in bulk and this right here is about 25 lbs of chicken this will serve about 350 people this will serve all right so our jumbal is ready I mean you can look at it and tell this is some creamy jumbalaya I mean jumbalaya is like I mean it goes back centuries it's just like a inexpensive delicious meal and if you look at most of the meals that Louisiana is known for jumbalaya gumbo PoBoy they're derived off something that's inexpensive delicious and super filling all right guys it's about 4:00 as you can see it's starting to slow down it's time for y'all to go I've had a lot of fun with y'all but I got to get some prep to do for tomorrow see y'all next time so I'm calling a check in with my wife she's in Lafayette with Josephine our baby my wife is pretty much in the same business as me her family has a pboy shop in Lafayette called oldtime grocery her dad started it so we met 7 eight years ago in a competition for the best PoBoy in the state of Louisiana you know Becca comes down here and uh come she comes in the restaurant looking for me I could kind of tell she was looking for more in the Rose beef hello what are y'all doing uh oh this little baby is a handfulthe pooy is important to the City of New Orleans because New Orleans made it something that was just rooted New Orleans history that kind of bubbled up from the streets turned into like everyday life people have to do it they have to get their P boy fixed Parkway has been here for over a hundred years and it's outlasted generation I've been here 20 years and I don't want to do anything else so I I wake up on a Saturday morning I know we're going to put out 1,500 or 2,000 sandwiches I don't sweat it New Orleans comes to me every single day and I get a chance to feed hey I'm Justin Kennedy general manager of Parkway Baker and Tavern and you are in my apartment right above the restaurant it's about 700 a.m. I have two bread delivery trucks bringing 700 loaves of bread and all I got to do is walk right down these stairs and meet them so I get a double order of bread on Saturday so what we have coming right now seven on the dot this is John jendusa and they invented the PoBoy loaf for the street car Strikers back in 1929 what's going on man what's up how you doing good to see you ready for a busy day I'm going to give you a hand with it oh let it fool you this Bread's not light backing up is lanimer they've been around since the 1800s they're one of the original Bakers in the city they didn't invent the PoBoy but they make it right too so we built it to 70 each one's 10 so that's that's 700 loaves so each loaf will do six Smalls or three larges we're looking to do close to 3,000 sandwiches between today Saturday and tomorrow Sunday what's up Andrew how are you man to why I'm doing this by myself right now that's one thing about living here being on top of the business because look my crew Works they get here at 800 in the morning they here till 700 at night you know so they're working close to 10 hours 11 hours a day so I'm here in the morning to catch some odds and ends when I crack this baby open look at that looks like cotton candy melt in your mouth when you load it up with shrimp oysters catfish sloppy roast beef pile it high this just disintegrates and melts in your mouth so you're not eating heavy dense bread but it's strong enough to hold it that's the beauty of new orans French bread the Great Depression hit a lot of people street car drivers when these guys weren't getting paid they went on strike and former street car conductors Ben and Clovis Martin and said look you come down to the Martin Brothers grocery store you show your badge we'll feed you we'll feed our poor boys and they were baking French bread as well but the bread was wide in the middle and skinny on the ends like a football John jendusa came up with a 36in loaf back in 1929 consistently the same size from beginning to end and this is what they still bake today you see it this morning by the end of the day all this will be gone and about an hour I got two team members coming to slice this up get it ready for service but uh now I don't want to be surprised so we're going to go look and see what kind of orders we have for today on online and arties you're in parkway's main bar this is original OG bar it's been around since like the opening day which was like around 1911 this is the most Sal after place to sit in the restaurant there's a lot of people watching so we probably have about one two we probably have about six dining spaces so right here uh we have a couple small ones a couple of bigger ones between uh you know all these spaces we have here we probably have 300 seats so it's a little early but sometimes a lot of orders come through online and we have parties that come through and big orders so I like to go check those first so this is what we got going on for today looks like we got 30 people that's an 11:00 that's no big deal uh we got a 12:00 noon pickup order for Alex that's about uh 20 sandwiches that's no big deal and then we got another 30 uh at 11:45 we could probably put that out in about 10 15 minutes if we have 30 sandwich and they're all Shrimp Po Boys I'll tell everybody on the line hey everybody make five shrimp and we can get that 30 sandwich done in 4 minutes or 5 minutes this is in November we have like a wedding reception so we're also going to go to the office and we're going to check the online orders so this office is pretty big my cousin has a spot my mother has a spot my uncle has a spot we got about 20 orders you can see what's going on ahead of time but the ticket will fire 15 minutes so even though there's one already in for 11:55 it's going to fire at140 I look for the ones like this one this is $181 so you want to make sure you might have a little bit more than 15 minutes to get that out I'll go ahead and print it out and have it ready for the team to know that's coming in all right so it's 8:15 and we're about to go pick up one of our employees we're going to get Mr pcel Ford he's been with us for about 12 years and and he is at the least to say a character he's about 73 and he just had a kidney transplant and I donated kidney to my brother about 10 years ago so you know I know what he's been going through and uh he's back to work as a GM look it's not my responsibility to pick staff members up and bring them to work and I and I don't do that but Parkway is nothing without the people in it making it happen every day you want to make sure your people are taking care of and I do my best you know I'm not perfect but I do my best to make sure my team knows I love them I care about them CU we're going to come up here and take a left and we're going to land right on Frenchman Street and it's music Club after music Club after music clubs you're sitting in the front man my name is pel Ford the latest call me pel I call him Ford an old ass man what you say when I call your old ass man live to get old that's all you got to do live to get old just keep on living you'll get old one day and I seen Parkway I said let me go over there and put an application in I said well I'm going tell you something I'm one of the best fried Cooks in the city my name is well known all over the quarters so uh I went to work and kenned say you know what fol I was there for about 2 or three years frying I was a little younger and he said you're the best fried cook that don't came through the door I say I appreciate that but uh all jokes aside you got to pay me like that but uh like I say it's a nice place to work for and I appreciate everything you know done for me you know man we open in 30 minutes man let's get to work stop all that talking man well you see what I'm saying about it all right gentlemen I'mma holl at y'all later y'all stay cool go in there and psych them up get them all happy for all right B I hear you thank you man so it's about 9:00 it's about an hour before we open the doors about to go prep some roast beef Miss D we're constantly prepping throughout the day in these back kitchens to feed the main one to get the sandwiches out and you're in the roast beef kitchen so that's all we do in here we'll do uh roast beef and we'll cook about 400 lb a day so this roast beef is for the signer sandwich at Parkway Bakery the roast beef pboy smothered in gravy put on a sandwich with mayo that French bread I showed you toasted just right can't beat it I mean look at this this is chuck roast I mean we do about 2,000 lb a week close to a ton a week and chuck roast is very fatty there's grains going all over the place it's best known and best uses for hamburgers but in this case if you cook it low and slow all that fat melts away into the gravy and you're left with flavor we cook this roast beef we put it in at about 6:00 yesterday evening and we take it out about 8 :00 in the morning so about 14 to 16 hours this roast comes out just like this where it's just I mean literally falling apart even though I can take my hands and just pull it apart that's not how you want to serve it when you're pulling it right now all this moisture is leaving the meat and it's going to dry it out so you want to you want it to cool solidly together slice it cool put that gravy on it put it on the line it just makes a sloppy great sandwich I'm going to put this on the this pan and if wheel it to the cooler cat that door it for a young fella and you see here's our chilled from the day before so this chilled roast beef is going back to the kitchen we just left to be sliced you see how nice that breaks and nice and tender it's not stringy or pulley like if was to pull it while it was hot and all that moisture is still in the slice because I never cracked the meat open when it was finished cooking so the roast beef pboy was just about the original pboy invented for the Striking street car workers they took the scraps of meat in the gravy and put fried potatoes on the French bread and we still have that sandwich today it's actually a pretty good seller we call it the street car poor boy so this is the thin IU that came off the meat meat before we thicken it so this is the gravy before thicken oven set to 350° throw that in there for about 30 35 minutes and it's that Parkway roast beef everybody loves so this is just one but we have a whole bunch in this oven that Brandon put in that's about to come out so when Brandon takes all this roast out he's going to head over into the main kitchen that we pumped the sandwiches out of he's going to fill all six sandwich makers Hot Wells up with that roast beef and barbecue beef and gravy to get ready for service so the roast beef's all on the line service underway here so I'm going to get in the kitchen start making some sandwiches all right y'all it's 10:30 it's not quite lunch rush yet but things are starting to kick off and right now is a good time where a lot of my employees go take their breaks before the lunch rush hits so I usually jump in here and help out all right so this is the main kitchen all the sandwiches are made this section the kitchen goes from the main register prints to this ticket and everything is on the line from the roast beef barbecue beef meatballs shrimp every sandwich maker Can Make Every Sandwich there's no certain station so that's what's a beauty about it that's how we can get them out a lot of kitens have a lot of different stations like a seafood station or a sliced meat station but here there's so many people in this tight spot it's faster and it's just more efficient every person can turn and do everything for one ticket they're not waiting on someone else to complete their order you know each sandwich maker probably does a few hundred sandwiches in a span we have one person dedicated to frying shrimp I mean this is a 20ft hood you can see about 15t of it is just dedicated to shrimp and that's all Reggie's doing today they'll probably fry about 500 lbs of shrimp today there's no wet batter there's no egg wash we take that natural salty juice from the shrimp and that's light corn flour a little salt pepper Cayenne in there and when he drops a basket I mean he's dropping about five or six sandwiches right there so right now I'm making a shrimp pboy dressed this is one of our high volume most popular sandwiches dressed is lettuce tomato mayo and pickle you want to make sure you get it corner to corner so we got this fried shrimp we're going to put that on there and our most popular sandwiches are not pre-measured or pre-weighed like a a burger patty or some deli meat that's weighed it's made by hand and by feel we don't want to measure it and have a little cup and put a cup of shrimp in there that's skimpy and if stuff's falling out that's fine just wrap it up so what we have here is the OG the signature roast beef and they want it dressed I mean that's pretty much the standard tomato pickle and then this one here's your roast beef I mean that's what we saw this morning put that on it and then when I put that gravy I was telling you about you put that on top of it and it just look it just latches on to it look how delicious that looks so this one's going to be the James Brown and it's pepper jack cheese but the key to this one is not just putting the cheese on there we run this cheese in the broiler you can see it's nice and melty and that little step right there makes a huge difference so this is the barbecue be then we're going to run it down with this shrimp it's like a poor man steaking Lobster so the next thing we're going to do is put some more barbecue sauce on it and then the last thing is we're going to put that spicy mayo on it I mean don't tell me that don't look good and that's the James Brown award winning this boy right here I mean yeah you're looking at like 28 o right here so this is a good pound and a half right here in your belly all my team's about done taking their breaks so I'm gonna finish these few tickets right here and when they're done I'm going jump on Expo it's 12:30 we in the heart of the kitchen where it goes down I'm battling out with my team it's mid- lunch rush it's real busy so Expediting that Parkway is a little different from other restaurant expediter the Expo is is dropping the fries the Expo is dropping all the call Food burgers chicken sausage grilled cheeses hot hams hot turkeys and then that put it together all the sides and fries and sell it out the window most expediters are on the other side of the line grabbing plates putting things together in this sense the exped is actually behind the line cooking and working with the team it's like a hybrid of an expediter and line cook in one so we like to keep a a 10 to 15 minute ticket time which it looks like that's about where we're at right now so behind each line You'll see a grill like right now we got a burger about done what's on that burger American American yeah so this Grill is very important you know we're listening to the calls you got to be very very attentive when you're one of our expediters if you're not a attention to detail kind of person you won't last being a Parkway Bakery I used to be my spot was right there where Manny is I used to be on that spot all day every day you know when I was a kid I've worked every spot in in this kitchen my favorite spot is Expo but I'm looking out at this ticket board I'm making sure everybody's keeping up I'm making sure the fry man's keeping up the bread person's keeping up the flow is going right here you need one more right yeah mostly watching the flow watching the ticket time looks like my crew has it over here so we're going to go check some other spaces in a restaurant and uh the online and the outdoors so it's about 1 :30 and went on a pre-order drive-thru you can see way in the distance over there that young man that's s he's like the parking lot matri D guiding all the online and phone traffic basically this came out of Co when it was all to go and no one could come in we had the space to develop this this uh to go system that evolved into something that's like epic you order on the online app from your house he's miked up to the kitchen and that order is ready and they're going to pull him up and then Adam's going to come out here right to the blinking light and they're going to get their food and go I don't see a lot of my regulars anymore I didn't know what happened to them like where are my regulars if you go hang in that Booth with s that's where they are they're coming through the drive-thru it's like a whole another restaurant we've opened up doing this and we'll serve hundreds of people we used to be open till 10:00 now we're only open till 600 one of the reasons we can close early and do the same numbers is open till 10:00 is this drive-thru it's phenomenal how many people it turns out all these spots are numbered 1 through 90 if it's not ready we'll park them and we'll run it to them in that golf cart right there got a pick up for Jack in there Jack's almost ready go ahead and park them and uh we'll bring it right to him s I'm going put jack in number 39 all right sounds good I'm going check on it yeah so this works good when it's raining you know people don't want to get out their car some people use it as a car hop 39 so this must be Jack right here Jack yeah all right man roast beef appreciate it thank you hey have a good one man easy as that all right so it's 2:00 things have slowed down a little bit so I jumped up here in our prep kitchen to make some jumbalaya and we're going to make about 200 lb of chicken and sausage jumbalaya we used about 40 lbs of sausage this recipe came from a barbecue team I'm on called Silence of the hams and it's for a fundraiser called hogs for the calls we raise money uh for Pediatric brain cancer on the big barbecue team so we're going to fire this big boy up and what this is is a tilt Skillet and it's basically just a big pot so when you fill it up whatever you want to you can tilt it and get rid of the product and easily put it in pans so first thing going to do we're going to melt 2 lbs of butter so here in Creole cooking in Louisiana they call it the Holy Trinity like the father son the Holy Ghost your onion your bell pepper and your celery but then we throw the garlic in there too that makes it a little bit Holier about 15 lb here and now it's going to start coming together when that fat starts rending out that sausage and getting into that veg and it's very important you do it like this cook your veg first render that down with the butter then cook your sauses down render that down with the sauteed vegetables if you just throw it all in there fill it up with water put your rice in you're not going to get that flavor like if you were to do it in this step process cuz what's happening right now that Fat's getting cooked rendering out of that sausage and soaking up in the vegetables and if you did it on and just boiled boiled it and uh you know cooked it without rendering you know that fat could just end up floating on the top and not actually in it me and my wife and my baby I can't just cook for us I always got to cook for a ton of people I love the production I love the volume aspect of it just cuz I've been around it if I was cooking one little pan of jumble ey it drive me crazy I don't even know if I'd know how to do it I got a cook in bulk and this right here is about 25 lbs of chicken this will serve about 350 people this will serve all right so our jumbal is ready I mean you can look at it and tell this is some creamy jumbalaya I mean jumbalaya is like I mean it goes back centuries it's just like a inexpensive delicious meal and if you look at most of the meals that Louisiana is known for jumbalaya gumbo PoBoy they're derived off something that's inexpensive delicious and super filling all right guys it's about 4:00 as you can see it's starting to slow down it's time for y'all to go I've had a lot of fun with y'all but I got to get some prep to do for tomorrow see y'all next time so I'm calling a check in with my wife she's in Lafayette with Josephine our baby my wife is pretty much in the same business as me her family has a pboy shop in Lafayette called oldtime grocery her dad started it so we met 7 eight years ago in a competition for the best PoBoy in the state of Louisiana you know Becca comes down here and uh come she comes in the restaurant looking for me I could kind of tell she was looking for more in the Rose beef hello what are y'all doing uh oh this little baby is a handful\n"