Domilise’s Po-Boy & Bar

The story

Domilise’s Po-Boy & Bar, New Orleans – Bib Gourmand Creole Deli Since 1918

A yellow house on Annunciation Street, a hand-painted sign, and a line that starts forming before noon. Domilise’s Po-Boy & Bar has been a fixture of Uptown New Orleans since 1918, when Peter and Sophie Domilise opened it as a neighborhood bar. Sophie soon began cooking plate lunches for longshoremen, and after World War II, the business passed to their son Sam and his wife, Dorothy “Miss Dot” Domilise. Miss Dot ran the place for more than 70 years, living and working on that same corner. Her motto was simple: “My name is Dorothy Domilise. I make sandwiches.”

The restaurant is now in its third and fourth generation of family ownership. The recipes, the menu, and the people behind the counter have stayed remarkably consistent. Ray the bartender has been pouring drinks for 45 years; Gayle has made sandwiches for nearly 35. The po-boys—shrimp, oyster, roast beef, sausage—are served on fresh, crispy Leidenheimer bread, just as they have been for decades. The atmosphere is unpretentious and warm: locals, tourists, politicians, and football dynasties all wait in the same line. Photos of celebrities hang on the walls, but everyone who walks through the door is treated like family.

In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, the family evacuated and returned in November to a line several blocks long. The city understood that when Domilise’s reopened, New Orleans was coming back. In 2026, the restaurant earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand for good quality, good value cooking—a fitting recognition for a place that has defined the Creole deli tradition for over a century.

The menu remains unchanged, except for the dearly departed Pepper Weiner. And as Miss Dot always said, the customer is the most important thing at Domilise’s. That mantra, like the po-boys, isn’t going anywhere.