10 foods that make America great

5) Po-boys (Louisiana)
In most American sandwiches, the more ingredients, the merrier. The French, by contrast, choose a few essential items, and a similar spirit seems to inspire the New Orleans po-boy.  You certainly can find po-boys that are piled high inside, but some of the best are models of extraordinary restraint.

Bill Hogan / Chicago Tribune via KRT A grilled shrimp po-boy demonstrates that seafood may be the perfect sandwich filling.

Food writer Pableaux Johnson calls New Orleans “a city powered by the po-boy,” and the Crescent City abounds with po-boys of every filling imaginable. Hot sausage? Of course. Soft-shell crab? No prob.

Whether it’s the fried oyster po-boy at Liuzza’s by the Track or one of the many unnamed concoctions at Guy’s, you’ll never run out of choices.

A few things remain constant: You want it dressed (lettuce and tomato), you want the bread same-day fresh and you want it served up with a minimum of fuss.

After all, this is workaday food, meant for hungry people of modest means. It’s often attributed to two brothers, Benjamin and Clovis Martin, who ran a restaurant in the city’s French Market. One apocryphal story has the Clovises serving up free sandwiches during a 1929 transit strike for those “po’ boys” on the picket line. Complicating that portrait, author John Mariani notes “poor boy” was a synonym for sandwich as early as 1875.

New Orleans is a city in constant struggle with modernity. Worried by the onslaught of Subway and Quiznos, members of the newly hatched New Orleans Po-Boy Preservation Society are fighting to ensure we don't forget their city’s loaved legacy.

If you’ve ever eaten a proper po-boy, you know it's simply unforgettable.