In June of this year I drove from my home in New Orleans 9th Ward to Harahan, Louisiana, to visit Gary ‘Koz’ Gruenig, legendary raconteur and old lion of the greater New Orleans po boy scene.

Gruenig’s restaurant is tucked away on a leafy side street adjacent to a tree-lined common surrounded by parking for po boy lovers who have poured into the restaurant for nearly 20 years.

Koz, ever the bon vivant, was holding court in the corner of his tidy hot plate joint when I walked in.

A small, spellbound audience of friends and old customers listened raptly whilst Gruenig regaled with tales of po boy folklore all focused through the lens of his near 60 year career as a restaurant worker and owner.

Waiting for a pause as Gruenig entertained his patrons I finally managed to pounce. “How did you come to be called Koz?”

He proceeds to weave this tale.

One day whilst blasting through a Gentilly parking lot on his paperboy bicycle.

“I crashed it into a car…and Xavier Viola, the cop who took the report said I was like a kamikaze pilot without the plane, and every time he came in to the shop after that he called me Koz.”

It’s 1965 in New Orleans’ Gentilly neighborhood and pre-teen Gary Gruenig has just been hired as a floor sweeper by Po Boy Bakery owner Jerry Seely.

Little did the future Koz know that he would be alongside Seely for the next 40 years.

In 1983 Gruenig moved his family into the apartment above the Po Boy Bakery.

“How was life in Gentilly?”

It was great, he recalls, whenever he’d forget his keys in the front door lock they would still be there when he flung the restaurant doors open for morning service.

The Po Boy Bakery was part of a close community of little family run neighborhood eat shops like Verbena Street Bakery, Teddy’s Grill and Vazquez Seafood.

The federal flood of 2005 saw the Po Boy Bakery in ruins but it barely slowed Gruenig down. Just two months after the deluge the ever-resourceful po boy man had pulled up stumps and put down hot plate roots in nearby suburb Harahan.

A Po boy Bakery regular had found Gruenig a restaurant that had escaped the flood available for lease.

Koz is a consumate mensch and storyteller. On my most recent visit he and an old friend reflected back on the glory days of New Orleans po boy scene when barrooms like Clarence and Lefty’s in the 9th Ward and Clancy’s in Uptown ruled the roost.

Plump oyster or roast beef sandwiches served with cold mugs of Falstaff beer might set you back a dollar or two; the aroma of Pall Malls flavored the room and the talk of the day was all centered around folks like footballer Archie Manning, wrestling mat king Ernie Ladd and politico J. Bennett Johnston.

If the joint had a jukebox you were likely going to be hearing Ernie K-Doe or Johnny Adams.

Over the course of two sitdown visits with Koz I was well-schooled in New Orleans po boy history from the 1960s onward.

Regulars from his old po boy shop in Gentilly routinely make the 20 minute drive to Harahan for his famed barbecue ham sandwich or fried chicken hot plates.

When one of his buddies got up to depart following a busy Saturday lunch he loudly announced to nobody in particular “Koz is the best and then there’s the rest”

Amen. They’re just not making old school cats like Koz anymore and his po boys are some of the finest I’ve eaten for this series.

Koz’s
6215 Wilson St
New Orleans, Louisiana
70123

telephone
(504) 737-3933