Walking into the new JED’s Local Louisiana Po’boys in the Goodwood Shopping Center, a giant mural lining the back wall of the restaurant is sure to catch your eye, 225 reports. It’s a photograph of the historic 1929 streetcar strike in New Orleans, one of the most violent of the transportation strikes at the time.
JED’s Local owner Russell Davis is quick to offer a little history lesson about the strike’s connection to the much-loved po-boy. Streetcar workers had started the strike over contract negotiations. Two former streetcar conductors, the Martin brothers, had opened a restaurant in the French Market and promised to feed the workers during the strike, free of charge.
“The restaurateurs were feeding the streetcar workers with a French bread sandwich and french fries and roast beef gravy on it,” Davis says. “When they used to come up to the back door, they would say, ‘Oh, here comes another poor boy.’ It eventually got truncated down to po-boy.”
The sandwich, of course, has come to be a true Louisiana classic. And as of last Friday, the Mid City area now has a new neighborhood po-boy shop: JED’s Local.
The restaurant serves classic po-boys—shrimp, oyster, catfish and roast beef—as well as specialty po-boys, like smoked alligator sausage and chicken Parmesan.
Read the full story for more about JED’s Local’s po-boys and be sure to sign up for the free 225 Dine e-newsletter to get your fix of local culinary news each week.
