McNulty Hits the Joint; Rene Louapre Considers Parkway

Mcnulty calls The Joint the best barbecue in New Orleans since its opening in 2004, when owner's Pete and Jenny Breen set the standard for barbecue restaurants to come. Now settled into their fun, new Bywater digs? the smoker got a well-deserved second line during its moved from Poland to Mazant Street months back? The Joint still has a short menu, but a big ass bar.

While McNulty wishes the crew would put more emphasis on using "fresh produce and imagination" for creative side items, he shows a lot of love for the barbecue:

Before your first bite you can smell the difference the smoker approach makes, and you can even see it. A pink smoke ring, testimony of a long, slow smoking process, paints the meats here, and it's the unifying factor for a menu that borrows widely from different regional barbecue traditions.

Rene Louapre gets disappointed with Parkway Bakery extremely messy roast beef po boy, saying he "wants a po boy he can eat with his hands, not with a fork." He describes the roast beef as stringy and dry, even when topped with enough gravy to disintegrate the french bread. He also goes off on Parkway's "industrial," rubbery meatballs, but is deeply enamored of the hot sausage patty:

the hot sausage was the standout carrying a fiery, crusty coaster of juicy sausage adorned with the trappings of a well-made po boy. Whether or not you believe in religion, their [sic] is something magical about the confluence of cold mayo, a pickle, and spicy, warm pork that can convince you there is a god.

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