Photo by Alex V. Cook
One of the great roast-beef poboys in South Louisiana is possibly on the chopping block
So many treasures lie along River Road, snaking the east side of the Mississippi River. One of the most fertile segments to discover lies around Destrehan, just before the road careens into Kenner and then on into New Orleans. It’s known among locals as the Bavarian Coast, named so for the hearty Germans who braved the perpetual flooding and territorial turmoil of 1722 to settle there. The fact that the Germans were here first gets lost in the French-ness of South Louisiana. One of the strangest things on this little stretch of winding road, one ironic and unconnected to its German heritage, is that Adolf Hitler’s horse Nordlicht is buried at La Branche Plantation. Captured as a spoil of war when the allies took Hitler’s Bavarian horse farm, the celebrated racehorse (two-time winner of both the Austrian and German derbies—his likeness was included on postage stamps) was purchased by a horse breeder at auction and brought down to La Branche to spend the rest of his days as a sire. A round stone and a small plaque mark Nordlicht’s grave, but his significant legacy lies in the fact that a number of Kentucky Derby racers can trace their lineage back to the steed.
The warp of River Road perhaps invites such occurrences. The winding river will have you facing all cardinal directions in your attempt to traverse it south. The Mississippi practically loops back on itself as it wanders, a jagged zipper holding North America together. Somewhere between the plantations (Destrehan Plantation being one of the best maintained homes on the river) and the gas stations and the horse of the twentieth century’s arch villain, awaits someplace even more difficult to comprehend: the warm and weathered St. Rose Tavern.
The building looks not dissimilar to its probable appearance in 1922, when Charles Elfer and his son William built it as a hotel for horse and buggy travelers. Elfer’s granddaughter Patsy Elfer runs the place now and tells the complicated history of the building with startling detail on the restaurant’s menu. The place was christened the St. Rose Tavern in 1980 and, in the ensuing years, has been used in a Maalox commercial and as the setting for Emmylou Harris’ music video for “Crescent City.” A movie called Passions was filmed there. Bruce Springsteen and wife Patti dined there once. You get the feeling that anything could happen when you walk through that door.
When my friend Ben and I first walk in, we’re confronted with a rose-pink felted pool table sitting before a bar lined with old-fashioned candy jars. The liquor selection is immense; the beer cooler stocked with a smattering of Louisiana craft beers. The place is filled to its rafters with stuff. When we find a table, we have a hard time deciding what to focus on. A long table of bikers places an order with Elfer as she navigates the room on a pair of crutches. She was born with a joint disorder that doesn’t slow her down much; she transports jugs of iced tea and platters of food to their recipients with sure-handed economy.
In the back room, a young boy plays with a large box of Lego blocks. A sign tacked up to the wall nearby pleads, “Do not play with Ashtin’s toys unless you ask and help pick them up. Thanks, Ashtin’s Mom.” A more than reasonable request, the sign conveys that in the recent past, there likely had been an incident.
Ashtin legos away the lunch hour and Elfer brings us our appetizer of cheese and Pickapeppa sauce. I explain to Ben that a common party food in this part of the country is a block of cream cheese topped with Pickapeppa sauce (a Jamaican import that falls somewhere between ketchup and steak sauce with its own tangy signature) eaten with crackers. It dangerously resembles a chocolate covered cheesecake to unwary snackers—it can be fun to watch someone’s face as they discover it is, in fact, not cheesecake. I tell Ben I’ve never seen it served in a restaurant.
Turns out, I still haven’t. The appetizer is actually a neat stack of cheddar cheese slices on butcher paper brought to us with alarming dexterity by our be-crutched waitress who then plops a liberal dollop of Pickapeppa next to it. You might think I’m making fun of this dish when I say the presentation has an haute cuisine air to it: ingredients separated so as to be integrated during the act of dining. Turns out cheddar tastes pretty good slathered with Pickapeppa sauce. Perhaps the gauntlet can finally be dropped to the cream cheese set, and partygoers everywhere can be spared from not-cheesecake incidents. It is a weird thing to eat; but then it’s a weird place.
The warp in the Mississippi perhaps invites this kind of strange juxtaposition. Elfer makes her way over to us with two fresh beers, and we are starting to feel guilty. We ask if we can just go up to the bar when our food is ready, but she waves us off. “Don’t worry, I got it,” she offers as she gathers up six beer bottles by the necks with one hand and limps back to the kitchen.
The menu offers a similar phase shift from the quotidian. Hidden among the appetizer list are homemade tamales and battered artichoke hearts. The special on the chalkboard above the bar is for a lobster pot pie. Elfer says, “I keep seeing that Red Lobster ad for it on the TV over there,” pointing toward the flat screen over the fireplace, forever tuned to a country music channel, separating Ashtin’s playroom from the rest of the dining area, “and I figured I have to be able to do it better than they do.”
What to get: The main attraction is the list of poboys that range from the usual fried seafood varieties to the unusual, like panée (breaded eye of round). It all looks tempting, but there is one true reason one makes the trek to the St. Rose Tavern—the roast beef poboy, arguably the best example of the form in the greater New Orleans area. Soon, ours arrives wrapped tightly in butcher paper twisted into a tassel on the end, facilitating its delivery by a woman on crutches. I’m a sucker for smart, purposeful packaging.
Celebrated Times-Picayune food critic Bret Anderson said of the soupy roast beef concoction in his December 21, 2011 review: “I would not cry foul if a person were to spoon this roundly-seasoned beef over pappardelle and call it ragu.” It was part of Anderson’s quest to find the best roast beef poboy in the area. Elfer remembers that review. “That poor guy,” she says of Anderson. “They put twenty or so restaurants in his story, but I bet he ate at about seventy roast beef poboy places. They did that list in about five months. I bet he got sick of roast beef.”
I could eat a roast beef poboy from St. Rose Tavern every day and never get tired of it. It comes in six different sizes—six-inch for $5, twelve-inch for $7, eighteen-inch for $10.50, with options for large and small buns or served on toast; but you’d be crazy to not get it ladled out on a toasted length of Leidenheimer’s French bread, the go-to manna of the poboy gods.
The roast beef is smothered and chopped into a semi-solid state, holding the complex, salty broth in the meat. Leidenmeier’s bread is ideal for this thick medium; its substantial crust holding in the moisture without turning the whole thing into a shirt-wrecking, au jus disaster. I’d advise getting it dressed with mayo, lettuce, and tomato. Mayo can be a bit much on some roast beef poboys, but the tang of it plays off the deep spicy marinade held in the meat. The tomato casts a bit of sunshine into this alchemical ménage à trois of savory-ness. It is the rare poboy that I would call perfect. And it holds up on the drive home; I ate one cold a couple hours later, and it still retained the same magic.
Ben and I sat in awe of our sandwiches as the lunch crowd cleared out. Even Ashtin found someplace to go. I wanted to hang out longer to sample one of the tavern’s storied pickled mirlitons, but they were out. I sated my lingering needs with an $8 t-shirt and the notion that every bend in that muddy river can be a vestibule for the greatest of treasures.
It appears that the clock is ticking on the experience at the St. Rose Tavern. The Advocate, Times-Picayune and other area news sources report that Elfer is being ordered to vacate the premises that have been part of her family for ninety years. According to a report posted at WDSU.com, the building was sold to New Orleans businessman Tommy Coleman in 1984 by Patsy Elfer’s father’s family, and Elfer has been renting it ever since.
Elfer and Coleman both preferred not to comment on the matter when called. The lease is reported to be up on January 31, 2014; so unless things sort themselves out, you might need to make a trip down River Road soon to get one of the best roast beef poboys around. Even if they were going to be open forever, I’d still advise you do it sooner than later.
Details. Details. Details. St. Rose Tavern 11760 River Road Saint Rose, La. (504) 469-8864 Open seven days a week Noon–10 pm
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