Spreading joy with a turkey 'rich girl'

I stepped to the counter at Jay's Bar-B-Q and called out my order with the confidence of someone who had done it a hundred times: turkey "rich girl," sauce on the side, fries and an unsweetened iced tea.

The folks behind the counter gave me a puzzled look. One mentioned they hadn't heard "rich girl" in a while.

I mentioned Steve Carter's name. Smiles spread across every face in the room.

No longer with us, Carter is still spreading joy.

Jay's has been on Government Street in Mid City since 1954, and it looks every bit of it—in the best possible way. Four-top tables. Tile floors. LSU football posters on the walls. The menu looks as if it were typed on a manual typewriter and never updated, which is a good thing. It has everything you need to know and nothing you don't. The most recent addition to the decor is probably a poster from the 2004 Sugar Bowl, when LSU defeated Oklahoma for the BCS National Championship. On first inspection, there is nothing remarkable about the place. That is, of course, entirely the point.

The name alone deserves an explanation. A po-boy—or "poor boy," depending on who raised you—becomes a "rich girl" at Jay's. It is a joke as old as the restaurant itself, the kind of wordplay that only survives in a city that takes its sandwiches seriously enough to give them personalities.

For years, Jay's was a regular lunch stop with my dear friend, the late Steve Carter—former LSU athlete, tennis coach, associate athletic director, state legislator and one of the most universally beloved figures this city has produced. Our lunches typically included Bridger Eglin and the late Richard Gill, all three childhood friends who grew up together and attended University High before going on to shape Baton Rouge in their own ways. I mostly listened and tried to keep up.

There was never a question of what to order. You got the turkey "rich girl" with fries, sauce on the side and an unsweetened iced tea. Rookies pour the sauce. Veterans dip. Carter taught me that distinction decades ago, and I have never deviated.

When I stepped back in the other day after several years away, nothing had changed. That was comforting. Reassuring in a way that is hard to articulate but instantly recognizable to anyone who has lost someone who meant so much.

The "rich girl" was as good as I remembered. The bread pressed but soft, the turkey smoky and tender, the sauce a perfect blend of tangy and sweet—worth every cent of the $15.25 price tag and worth the trip on its own merits.

Order the turkey "rich girl." Dip, don't pour. And tell them Steve Carter sent you.

—JR Ball