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You know how it goes. You’re in dutch with your better half for staying out too late, drinking too many Yoo-hoos, chasing too many fireflies. There must be some kind of offering you can make to ensure your homecoming is peaceful, and that you won’t be sleeping on the couch. Something on bread . . . with beef . . . and fried seafood.
That’s merely one version of the New Orleans urban legend that’s grown up around the peacemaker, a surf and turf po’boy with as many variations as its origin story.
Typically it has that rich debris, the slurry of juices and beefy bits that fall from a roast, bedded on a fluffy, crackly baguette, with shredded lettuce, tomato, pickles, mayo, and either fried shrimp or oysters—a sandwich that gives new meaning to the term “marital aid.”
Just around the corner from Erick Williams’s Virtue, Daisy’s, his NOLA-inspired sports bar, offers a peacemaker that seems like a capable bedroom diplomat.
With shaved beef and a restrained application of gravy, it holds its form better than a typically sloppy debris po’boy. That’s also because, after arduous research on the ground in the Big Easy, Williams chose to build his with hard-fried oysters.
“We ate some amazing peacemakers made with oysters,” he says. “That style stood out to us most. We could have done shrimp, but I liked the texture of oysters more.”
Me too. On a couple occasions at Daisy’s, I asked for a regular beef po’boy topped with fried shrimp. This ad hoc version has a nice snap that unfortunately tends to disintegrate the whole affair—and perhaps your own fragile situationship.
On Williams’s peacemaker, boarded on NOLA’s Leidenheimer baguettes, the bivalves’ crunch yields to their briny, lush softness but also helps keep the veg from slipping overboard in a sloppy mayo slide.
Splash some tangy Crystal cayenne magic on the proceedings and you have a proper olive branch, available in six or 12 inches, depending on the seriousness of your offenses.
Daisy’s Po-Boy and Tavern
5215 S. Harper
Six-inch $15.99, 12-inch $29.99
773-675-8767
daisyspoboychicago.com
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