By Megan Wyatt  |  The Advertiser
The man behind the Viva La Waffle food truck and Swamp Pop sugarcane sodas is bringing a new po’boy shop to downtown Lafayette next month.
Collin Cormier has been throwing around the idea of opening a funky po’boy shop similar in style to places such as Killer Poboys in New Orleans for a while now.
When the space most recently occupied by Anne’s Table opened up at 740 Jefferson St., Cormier took the plunge and decided to open up Pop’s Poboys.
“A twist on the classic po’boy is what sort of got the ball rolling over the past couple of years,” Cormier said. “And I just found the space, and it reminded me of an old New Orleans style space, so the idea came back to me.”
While he plans to offer innovative po’boys, he says he also wants people to know the lunch spot will offer traditional classic po’boys too.
Cormier is hoping to open Pop’s by April 1 and will initially be open for lunch only either Monday through Friday or Tuesday through Saturday.
The po’boys will be served on Langlinais Bakery’s French bread and will include options such as roast beef with crispy Gulf oysters, red bean falafel, meatball stew, fried catfish with pickled-okra tartar sauce and grilled shrimp banh mi with chili-garlic mayo and pickled veggies.
The menu will also include fun starters such as hush puppies with cane butter and desserts such as bacon-caramel brownies.
And Pop’s will, of course, serve Swamp Pop and ice cream floats made out of the soda.
Cormier is toying with the idea of adding in breakfast once the restaurant is established.
Breakfast items would be portable and keep the po’boy theme.
“We’d like to offer quick stuff, like really good breakfast sandwiches on pistolettes to keep that French bread theme going,” Cormier said.
Just because Cormier is opening a brick-and-mortar spot doesn’t mean that his food truck is going to disappear.
“It’s going to be a little hectic while we’re getting this place set up,” Cormier said. “We might be a little sporadic. But it’s not going anywhere.”
Cormier just launched a po’boy creating contest in which the winner will get a sandwich named after him or her added to the menu and one of the po’boys per week for a year.
Learn more about the new restaurant and the contest by liking “Pop’s Poboys” on Facebook.
http://www.theadvertiser.com/story/grubcity/2015/03/16/viva-la-waffle-cormier-opening-poboy-shop-downtown/24867759/
