Gold Post Sandwich House

A Hattiesburg institution for more than 40 years - The Gold Post Sandwich House. This is my father's favorite, always has been, for as long as I can remember anyway. My first po-boy came from the Gold Post, and it was a shrimp po-boy, because that's my dad's favorite po-boy. Looking back I may have been 12 or 14 years old before I knew that you could get anything besides shrimp between a split baguette.

I visited the Gold Post for the first time in years this week. I can say this, there's something for consistency, because it was just exactly like I remembered it, I'm not sure that it's changed one bit since the early 80's when I would go there with my dad.

Stepping to the counter the menu was a lot more extensive than I remembered. I was sort of bummed out that I didn't go on one of the days (M-W-F) where they have their house made gumbo. On, Tuesdays and Thursdays they have a house made veggie soup which I hear is also good. I had my heart set on gumbo.

I ordered a shrimp po-boy and order of onion rings and a diet coke. That's what my dad would have ordered had he been there with me. I didn't remember it being quite this expensive, the lunch setting me back almost $11.

After a short wait my number was called and I stepped to the counter and back in time 20 years. There it was, one of my dad's favorites. The classic Gold Post shrimp po-boy.

I found a table, and deconstructed my po-boy. The Gold Post may have the best bread of any sandwich joint in town, so it's good, real good. The shrimp were like I remembered but different than most shrimp po-boys. The shirmp were not individually breaded and fried, there were kind of clusters of 2-4 shirmp that were breaded and fried together into little mini-ship patties? It's really quite unique. They also fry them darker than the golden brown you would probably expect.
The same onion rings from my youth, I didn't really like them all that much then and I still don't. These aren't house made rings, they're mass produced and are not ringlets of sliced onions. They were pretty much processed onions formed into rings coated in batter and fried. Fried is always good....right? Well, not so much with these rings.

The dressed po-boy was good, not as good as in my memory, but good. The remoulade sauce that they serve on their seafood po-boys is good, flavorful, but not what I consider spicy...so I added some Tabasco sauce.

While I sat in the Naugahyde booth with the wood grain Formica table top and ate my sandwich, I noticed something. The people I watched people walk in and out who have been coming to this Hardy Street Icon for not years but decades.

My mind kept wondering back to those first po-boys with my dad. I became a dad for the first time not that long ago. I hope that in a few years my own son can look back with some memories like the ones that I relived over a decently good, somewhat over priced, shrimp po-boy in a little sandwich shop that I really hadn't even thought about in years.

Maybe it wasn't really a po-boy, maybe it was a time machine.