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Back in the Neighborhood
January 18, 2007
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Over a po-boy lunch at Jazzy, Parker shared his vision of a neighborhood restaurant where the food quality never wavers. As his guests dug into po-boys on crisped Leidenheimer bread, including the house specialty roast beef, cooked for 10 hours, the 40-year-old restaurateur explained how he intends to book jazz music and gradually expand his menu to include jambalaya and red beans.
The Times-Picayune
Back in the Neighborhood
Kevin Parker finds the support he needs to reopen his restaurant in the Upper 9th Ward
Friday, January 12, 2007
By Brett Anderson, Restaurant writer
“You don’t see that anymore.”
Kevin Parker repeated the phrase again and again during a tour of Jazzy Po-Boys last month. He said it about the oval window in front, the one in which his restaurant’s name is emblazoned, and he said it about the windows set high on the back walls, framed by dark wood. He said it about the Excelsior cooler behind the bar and about the bar itself, both of which date to the 1940s.
Parker shook the bar to demonstrate its solidity. He has refurbished it twice — the first time after he bought the old Dolliole’s Lounge in 2005, three months before the broken levees destroyed his handiwork.
“You can see there’s so much love in these floors,” he said a few minutes later. He crouched down, rubbing his hand over a surface he hopes customers will one day dance upon in a room set off from the bar. “The old terrazzo floors with the metal in between. You don’t see that much anymore.”
The neighborhood where Parker envisions a bright future could benefit from more folks with his appreciation for fine detail. Yet Jazzy Po-Boys’ location, at the corner of Port and Derbigny streets, in a badly hit and still barren section of the Upper 9th Ward, has helped spur Parker’s dream and in some ways marshall him the support to achieve it.
Last year, when Parker was still looking for a way to rebuild his business, Seedco Financial Services, a community development institution, was working to develop the best strategies for helping the disaster-affected region rebound. The organization had helped small businesses in Lower Manhattan get on their feet after the 9/11 attacks.
Seedco’s local office came to the conclusion that the most prudent financial aid in the first phase of rebuilding New Orleans should go to businesses that could expect to immediately generate revenue.
“So we started looking for businesses that were doing business now,” said Robin Barnes, senior vice president of Seedco Financial Services Gulf Coast Office. “That turned out to be restaurants.”
The Restaurant Recovery Initiative was soon launched. Working with an array of partners and funders, Barnes said the effort has resulted in the dispersal of $750,000 in low-interest loans to 12 local businesses, including Parker’s.
Barnes said Seedco was drawn to Parker’s background as a seasoned New Orleans restaurant professional — his last job was in the kitchen at Parkway Bakery, the Mid-City po-boy specialists — as well as to the enthusiasm he exhibited in the face of his plight.
“His business was wiped out months after opening,” she said. “But he had started generating revenue. This was going to be a viable business. This is what he wanted to do.”
Aside from providing him with financial assistance that otherwise would not have been available to him, Parker’s Seedco partnership has given him access to consulting services. On Tuesday, Barnes and colleague Courtney Snelling visited Jazzy Po-Boys with executives from Legal Sea Foods, the East Coast restaurant chain. The group was in town for its corporate meeting, which it used as an opportunity to share expertise with struggling local restaurateurs.
Over a po-boy lunch at Jazzy, Parker shared his vision of a neighborhood restaurant where the food quality never wavers. As his guests dug into po-boys on crisped Leidenheimer bread, including the house specialty roast beef, cooked for 10 hours, the 40-year-old restaurateur explained how he intends to book jazz music and gradually expand his menu to include jambalaya and red beans.
“I did cooking at Delgado,” he said. “I like the fancy stuff. But it’s not all people want when they come to New Orleans. They want that old-school traction.”
The meeting yielded a promise from Legal’s attorneys to assist Parker with contracts. Before his guests departed, Parker shared with them a theory he outlined during the December tour, when he argued, “Cooking is a dying art in New Orleans… We got babies raising babies. They don’t have time to teach their kids how to cook. It’s all fast food.”
He continued, “I’m not going to send anything out of that kitchen on bread that hasn’t been toasted. I’ll only fry french fries in french-fry grease. I’m not going to serve you a french fry that tastes like seafood or chicken. I’m not going to cut corners.”
Parker stood on Port Street, pointing out who has and has not returned to the neighborhood. He has been living in a trailer parked behind his restaurant.
“The woman next door, she got ripped off by her contractor,” he said. “Now she doesn’t have the money to come back.”
Moving back inside, Parker continued to revel in the details of the building he has so lovingly restored. Even the bathrooms offered opportunity for admiration.
“How did the men’s room get the pink tile and the lady’s room get the blue tile?” Parker asked, smiling and shaking his head. “It makes you wonder what kind of place this was.”
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Jazzy Po-Boys
1700 Port St.
(504) 943-0689
Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday; 1 to 6 p.m. Sunday.
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