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The Radical Sandwich Kings of New Orleans The chicken-fried steak sandwich at Turkey and the Wolf in New Orleans is not so much a food you consume as it is a shape-shifting monster you wrestle into submission. 2 thin slices of white bread can barely include the torrent of active ingredients roaring between them: ripples of pounded New York strip encased in crackly batter, a mound of coleslaw and a ragtag row of dill pickle coins, and slicks of pepper jelly and a spicy mayo dubbed "bird sauce." After you've chosen up a half of this beast, it's difficult to put it down for factors of usefulness (it threatens to implode in your hands) along with satisfaction. The sandwich is olympian in its excess, and it yet in some way advances the idea of balance in deep space: For each velvety bite there is an opposite however equivalent crunch; despite the deluge of condiments, the essential beefiness never ever gets swept away. Chef and co-owner Mason Hereford brings a specific Dr. Frankenstein glee to every dish he makes, though it's the chicken-fried steak sandwich that arguably ranks as his greatest development. His "bird sauce" riffs on a spicy mayo dip served at a New Orleans component called McHardy's Chicken & Fixin' in the Seventh Ward: Hereford's variation integrates Duke's Mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco's chipotle pepper sauce, and gochugaru (Korean chile flakes). But the genuine trick, he told me over the phone, is that when he pulls the battered beef from the fryer, he sprinkles it with chicken seasoning powder which imparts, he states, a "je ne sais quoi" poultry flavor. The result is so extensive that, inning accordance with Hereford, some repeat customers have come in requesting the "fried chicken sandwich" they had last time. He doesn't bother to correct them. Hereford and his organisation partner, Lauren Holton, opened Turkey and the Wolf this past August, and New Orleanians have actually taken to the location immediately, inviting its specific sort of quirkiness to a city that has actually long thrived on trick. Serving a short menu of magnificently aberrant sandwiches and frequently changing miscellanea (raucous salads, eccentric tacos and tostadas, Americana nibbles), the restaurant sits on an otherwise quiet corner in the Irish Channel. It's a traditionally working-class community located south of the Lower Garden District, set down along one of the Mississippi River's lots of serpentine flexes through the area. Here, the surrounding buildings sit low and the Louisiana sky looms big. If you're checking out New Orleans and remaining in the French Quarter or the Central Company District, as many visitors do, lunch or dinner at Turkey and the Wolf is well worth the 13-minute drive. Holton supervises a playful mixed drink program; there's one rum-fueled zinger called "When I was 10 I Went to School as a Dead Cheerleader for Halloween." Each of my local good friends separately referred to Hereford's food menu as "stoner food." When among his star developments is a fried bologna sandwich crowned with molten American cheese and a handful of potato chips, it's a simple label to concede. Calling his cooking "stoner food" doesn't rather catch the sly mastery Hereford brings to the kitchen, though. He formerly worked as chef de cuisine at neighboring Coquette, among the city's most well-known modern fine-dining destinations: It's a location where chef-owners Kristen Essig and Michael Stoltzfus serve smoked catfish dip, green tea-cured cobia with cucumber and creme fraiche, and other well-executed ideas that draw on impacts near and far. At his own location, Hereford's meals may initially check out as let's-see-what's-in-the-fridge munchies, but look past their excessive appearance and it's clear they have actually derived from skilled hands and a sharp, intentional mind. More broadly, part of the instant appeal of Turkey and the Wolf might be how effortlessly the tone of Hereford's cooking slides into the lexicon of casual New Orleans dining. After all, this is a city committed to the gloriously ungainly sandwich. Muffulettas have been sacrosanct for over a century, when grocers initially started piling thinly sliced treated meats (salami, ham, mortadella) and Provolone or comparable cheese onto bread as a heart go-to lunch for immigrant Sicilian workers. Chunky, slippery olive salad is as needed to the muffuletta as is motor oil to a vehicle engine. https://usalocator.org/kfc-locations/indiana/angola And of course there are po' boys, whose origins are murky (their popularity rose throughout the Anxiety age) but whose universality is absolute. Variations packed with fried oysters and shrimp can be grappled by hand, though I can never deal with a gravy-doused roast beef po' kid at a regional shrine like R&O without ultimately turning to knife and fork. It's on the backs of these classics that the grand edifice of New Orleans sandwich culture stands; on their structure rests the more recent guard Turkey and the Wolf among them who are adding their own modern-day constructs to the genre. Hereford is establishing himself as a next-gen nonconformist, however it's Donald Link, one of New Orleans's towering chef-restaurateurs, who most profoundly shifted the town's sandwich ecosystem when he opened Cochon Butcher in 2009. Link's flagship dining establishment, Cochon, mostly focuses on the tastes of the chef's Cajun heritage, but Butcher's casual food reflects inspirations near and far. Link's muffuletta, constructed from house-made charcuterie on a sesame-flecked bun, is a marvel of contrast and nuance. His development work of genius, however, is the bacon melt thin layers of chewy-crisp cured pork stacked with stewed collard greens, pepper aioli, and Swiss cheese on buttered toast. It hearkens to the South without referencing Louisiana food culture specifically. You can also discover a Cubano, a barbecued pulled pork number, and Moroccan spiced lamb with cucumber and tzatziki on flatbread. Link brings the tastes home again with Butcher's must-have side order: hot boudin, Acadiana's magnificent, funky pork and rice sausage. Connect undoubtedly didn't create the concept of blending and matching worldwide flavors and serving them in between slices of bread. However in New Orleans, where culinary traditions run deeper than anywhere else in America, I 'd argue that the success of Cochon Butcher straight encouraged the imaginations of other regional cooks. I think, for instance, of Killer PoBoys on Dauphine Street in the French Quarter (opened in 2015), where the eponymous sandwich comes in variations like salmon and cream cheese; chorizo, eggs, avocado, salsa verde, and black beans; or the restaurant's finest innovation, a shrimp po' young boy that doubles as a banh mi, dressed with daikon, carrots, cucumber, and Sriracha aioli, a tribute to the enduring Vietnamese cooking influences on NOLA's dining landscape. Turkey and the Wolf locates itself plainly in this sandwich lineage, though Hereford's distinctive imagination sculpts an unique specific niche. So does the relaxing quirkiness of the restaurant's physical space, which combines 1950s kitsch (laminated, chrome-line dining tables fill the room) with useful commercial minimalism (painted concrete walls remember the pale chartreuse of primary school corridors, reclaimed woods consist of the bar). Hereford's bro, William, is a photographer; for the dining establishment, he shot gorgeous stills of iconic New Orleans dishes. At one meal, I sat under a portrait of the lofty, golden fried shrimp po' boy at famous Domilise's. The artful gesture frames such standard-bearers as renowned forebearers instead of company competitors. Amongst the dining establishment's sandwiches, the chicken-fried steak is the indisputable star, standing highest literally and figuratively. Hereford told me he's threatening to take it off the menu (he's tired of pounding all that New york city disrobe to linen-napkin thinness); we'll see how loudly his clients protest. Plenty of other treasures necessitate digging deeper into the menu: He makes a collard greens melt that strikes me as a vegetarian action to Link's bacony masterpiece; Hereford heaps his take with Swiss cheese and marinaded cherry peppers and includes a center slice of bread to separate a layer of coleslaw. I may miss out on the pork, if I weren't so distracted by every other zigzagging component stuffed into this insane stunner. Divert from the trippy Southern-Americana vagaries into a Indian-Middle Eastern mashup territory: a golden griddled roti scattered with long-simmered lamb neck (its texture similar to the tenderest pot roast), lemon yogurt, cucumber, chopped onion, and torn herbs like mint and dill. For the more conservative of palate, there is a sandwich of smoked ham, cranberry sauce, herbed mayo, aged cheddar, and arugula on a long, lithe roll. I admire the campfire perfume of the ham, which Hereford and his team fastidiously smoke in-house, but compared with the rest of the huge personalities on the menu it uses the least interesting magnetism. Salads, doing the same with the sandwiches, are generous and lovably kooky. Shards of pig-ear crackling fleck a garlicky stack of cabbage thrumming with lime and roasted chile vinaigrette, with sunflower seeds including an earthy echo of crunch. Everything-bagel spices (poppy seeds, sesame seeds, and dehydrated garlic) sign up with tomatoes, minced bacon, and blue cheese dressings to maul a hunk of iceberg lettuce, amounting to a memorable wedge salad. These leafy stacks should be shared: Their tastes are almost too extreme as a standalone meal. The most relaxing thing to consume at Turkey and the Wolf is a pot pie changed into a fried hand pie filled with the gentlest stewed chicken and served with a side of buttermilk-tarragon dressing for dipping. The weirdest thing? That would be the "Double Decker Boomtown Liberty Tostada," two fried tortillas adhered by refried red beans and French onion dip and ended up with "shrettuce" (Hereford discussed he's extremely happy with his shredded lettuce portmanteau), cheese curds, and a victorious wallop of crushed Doritos. Okay, I get it; pass me the blunt.