Savor Scout › Food guides › Po' boys
How to find a good po' boy
A po' boy is New Orleans' sandwich: Louisiana French bread — crackling crust, light, airy inside — filled with fried shrimp, oysters or roast beef in gravy, and 'dressed' with lettuce, tomato, pickles and mayo.
What separates a good one from a bad one
- The right bread — Light, airy French bread with a thin, shattering crust. Dense sub rolls are wrong.
- Fried seafood to order — Cornmeal-crusted shrimp or oysters, hot and crisp.
- Roast beef debris — Slow-cooked beef in gravy, messy and rich.
- Dressed — Lettuce, tomato, pickles and mayo.
- Hot sauce on the table — Louisiana-style.
What to order
- Fried shrimp po' boy, dressed — The standard.
- Fried oyster po' boy — Briny and rich.
- Roast beef debris po' boy — Messy.
- Half and half — Shrimp and oyster.
- Zapp's chips — On the side.
Where to find Po' boys
Po' boys is mostly found at Cajun and Creole restaurants, so that is where to look. Open listings put 3,169 of them across the US, and these are the cities and campuses with the most.
Cities with the most
New Orleans, LA 213 Houston, TX 94 Baton Rouge, LA 60 Lafayette, LA 50 Dallas, TX 29 Austin, TX 26 Los Angeles, CA 24 Chicago, IL 24
Campuses with the most within a mile
UL Lafayette 12 Delgado Community College 8 Tulane University 7 TSU 6 HCC 6 City Colleges of Chicago-Harold Washington College 6
A few to start with
- Public Service — New Orleans, LA
311 Baronne St, New Orleans - Ragin Cajun — Houston, TX
930 Main St, Houston - Cork's Cajun Fried Fish and Shrimp — Baton Rouge, LA
5131 Government St, Baton Rouge - Pat's Downtown — Lafayette, LA
107 E Main St, Lafayette - NOLA Brasserie — Dallas, TX
1201 Main St, Dallas - Roux Restaurant — Austin, TX
214 E 6th St, Austin
Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.
How Savor Scout looks for it
The search reads for po' boy, Leidenheimer-style French bread, dressed and fried to order, and favours Louisiana kitchens.
Looking in a particular city?
Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Houston, TX
- Philadelphia, PA
- Phoenix, AZ
- San Antonio, TX
- San Diego, CA
- Dallas, TX
- San Jose, CA
- Austin, TX
- Indianapolis, IN
- Jacksonville, FL
- San Francisco, CA
- Columbus, OH
- Charlotte, NC
- Fort Worth, TX
- Detroit, MI
- El Paso, TX
- Memphis, TN
- Seattle, WA
- Denver, CO
- Washington, DC
- Boston, MA
- Nashville, TN
- Baltimore, MD
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Louisville, KY
- Portland, OR
- Las Vegas, NV
- Milwaukee, WI
- Albuquerque, NM
- Tucson, AZ
- Fresno, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Long Beach, CA
- Kansas City, MO
- Mesa, AZ
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Colorado Springs, CO
- Omaha, NE
- Raleigh, NC
- Miami, FL
- Oakland, CA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Tulsa, OK
- Cleveland, OH
- Wichita, KS
- Arlington, TX
- New Orleans, LA
- Bakersfield, CA
- Tampa, FL
- Honolulu, HI
- Aurora, CO
- Anaheim, CA
- Santa Ana, CA
- St. Louis, MO
- Riverside, CA
- Corpus Christi, TX
Related food guides
Cajun food, sandwiches, seafood