Pooch's Turtle Po' Boy

I searched through hundreds of photos and cartoons of turtles, and all seemed a little 'noir' for a new post about eating them. Then I searched through hundreds of photos of Po' Boy sandwiches, none of which represented to me what a Po'Boy should be. There were photos of de-constructed and re-combined Po' Boys, sandwiches heaped with heirloom tomatoes and mesclun, and bulging from their French loaf with giant shrimp.

Finally, on google image page 16, I found the above photo:

A Po' Boy is a fast food sandwich, not particularly made and paid quickly, but prepared to be eaten on the run. The ingredients are meat or seafood, sometimes both, iceberg lettuce, in short shreds or chopped, tomatoes, chopped, and sliced pickles (I prefer to use pickle relish instead of pickles which gives the sandwich even more portability), mayonnaise or remoulade sauce, plus any hot sauce one might wish.

With the ingredients prepared as above, and the sandwich being nicely wrapped in butcher's paper, it can be eaten almost anywhere, at a bus stop or on a trolley, or at the bar in a tavern at 8pm on a friday evening, without it becoming a 'banjo'.

Segue to two stories about this sandwich:

In the late 1980's, I was chef at the South Beach Tavern, a small, funky spot in a fringe neighborhood of Virginia Beach. The building had been a pool hall and barber shop, and was simply a long narrow cinder-block building painted white, with a parrot sitting in a life preserver.

Inside, it had a raised bandstand, a single row of tables against the wall, and a 60-ft. long bar at the end of which was a small open kitchen, so guests, like my favorite wine salesman, could sit at the bar where I was cooking.

There was a 'gratuity carafe' sitting on the end of the bar and I had made a deal with my salad man slash dish-washer that he could keep anything under a twenty in the jar and I got $20's and over, because a gratuity of that size or larger would be an acknowledgment of my culinary prowess, not simply an obligatory 'TIP'. Many nights he took home all of it.

We opened at 4 p.m, but I was usually there early in the morning because we did not have a printed menu, and I prepared 5-8 items from scratch daily. The only items you could always get were linguine marinara, red beans and rice, and a burger and fries, but not many guests ordered those.

I roamed the head boat docks every day, buying from tourists what they didn't want to take back to their hotel rooms: Redfish, Tautog, Black Sea Bass, which I wrapped in fennel sticks and flamed with brandy, Spanish mackerel, and even an occasional shark. I drove to Hampton to meet returning scallop boats, and made deals with local crabbers to bring me their best 'Jimmies'.

One morning a young man came in the back door of the tavern and asked me if I ever used snapping turtle. He explained that he was a butcher at a local grocery, and he and his 'daddy' (sic) trapped snapping turtles and he had 40 pounds cleaned, on the bone, in a cooler in his car. He continued how the meat of the turtle ranged from the darkest, almost like turkey thigh, to the lightest white meat, like Tautog.

Having never even seen a snapping turtle or any of its components, much less cooked it, I asked the young man how much he wanted. "Buck and a half a pound," he replied.
I bought it all.

There followed a stunning array of menu items like 'Snapper Soup', 'Turtle Fritters'(boiled, then batter fried), and 'Fricasse of Snapping Turtle Piquante'. The bar favorite was a 'Snapping Turtle Po'Boy', made as above with simple remoulade sauce.

I dusted the bone-on pieces with flour, cayenne, garlic salt,black pepper,paprika and corn meal, then fried them until golden in about a half inch of XVOO. I drained the pieces and put them in a roasting pan, covered them lightly with aluminum foil and put them in a 300 F. oven for about an hour. When the meat was falling off the bone, I took the pan from the oven and kept it covered on top of the stove. I used this meat to run both the fricasse and a Po' Boy on the menu on a Friday night.

I had chosen as my chapeau for the evening, a pink and black sports cap from Pooch's Turtle Lounge, the only real beach bar in Virginia Beach. They featured, among other things, FREE shrimp for Monday Night Football so I was a regular.

Late in the evening, a well dressed couple came in the back door right near the kitchen. They had obviously been imbibing and the man swayed in the doorway squinting to take in the scene of a hundred hungry drinkers devouring the delectable specials I had prepared.

The woman groped to the nearest table and the man stumbled up, leaned on the bar and said to me, " Hey man, What's that stupid hat say?". I pointed to my hat, my face more of a grimace than a smile. " Pooch's Turtle Lounge." I turned my back.

They did not eat the Po'Boy. She had my home-made scallop and thyme ravioli, and he had the turtle fricasse. I noticed him watching me several times as I finished dinner and closed the kitchen.

They were really drunk now, and the man pushed back his chair loudly and staggered over to me. I turned to my guy and said under my breath," I'm gonna have to cut this guy." He creased a hundred dollar bill and slid it into the carafe. " Hey, man," he said with a smile, " I'm Pooch."