What Does ‘Dressed’ Really Mean on a Poboy in Louisiana? Depends Where You Are

LAFAYETTE, La. — You can talk to a man in New Orleans, a man in Lake Charles, and a man in Lafayette and ask them all the same question: What makes a poboy "dressed"? You'll get three different answers.

As it turns out, the sandwich itself has never had a rulebook. The whole thing goes back to 1929, when former streetcar conductors Bennie and Clovis Martin started feeding striking transit workers for free out of their coffee stand in the French Market. According to the local stories, every time a hungry union man walked in, one of the brothers would holler “here comes another poor boy,” and the name stuck.

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What never got written down was what belongs on it once you say “dressed.” A hundred years later, we’re all still arguing about it, parish by parish.

New Orleans: An Old Tradition With Firm Rules

If you travel to New Orleans, there’s no debate at all, or at least not among the people who’d know. Dressed means shredded lettuce, sliced tomato, sliced pickles, and mayonnaise.

Jennifer Petry, who runs Mahoney’s, once told The Local Palate exactly that: mayo, lettuce, pickle, tomato, no substitutions. She’s also got strong feelings about people who try to sneak onion onto the sandwich.

“Some people try to put onion on there and it drives me crazy,” she said.

Lake Charles: Just Say "No" to Pickles

Drive a few hours west and the formula shifts on you. At Darrell’s Famous Poboys in Lake Charles, dressed means mayo, mustard, lettuce, tomato, and cheese, and the pickles disappear entirely, at least according to a regional breakdown Rouses Markets ran a while back.

Swap pickles for mustard and cheese and you’ve basically wandered into a different sandwich tradition, and Lake Charles isn’t even that far from where the whole thing started.

Lafayette: But Have You Tried Ketchup?

In the heart of Acadiana, Olde Tyme Grocery on West St. Mary Boulevard has been putting ketchup on a fully dressed shrimp poboy since it opened back in 1982, right alongside the mayo, lettuce, and tomato. There are fans who swear that the sweetness cutting through the fried shrimp is exactly why they love it.

Not everybody’s on board, though. Plenty of regulars still walk in and ask for no ketchup.

Of course, these rules mostly apply to shrimp poboys. There are plenty of restaurants that offer far more than just a shrimp option. At the end of the day, a poboy is a big sandwich, and there is no limit to how many combinations of sandwiches you can have.

Local places like Chris' and Pop's in Lafayette have been serving up a wide variety of the popular loaded sandwich on good French bread. All around Louisiana, different places offer different variations.

So Who’s Got It Right?

There is no single recipe for gumbo. There is no "perfect" jambalaya. So, you really wouldn't expect there to be a "right" answer to the "dressed" question. All we can say for certain is that, like most of the food of South Louisiana, we do it right way more often than anyone else.

Where do you stand?

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