The restaurant's title may be memorable, but it isn't completely true. (Phillip Lucas/NYT Institute)

Sigh …

If there’s one thing I’m going to remember about this Institute, it’s going to be the late-night car adventures. Every student in this program has been lost in the Big Easy at least once since arriving here.

New Orleans is confusing. The roads make little, if any, sense. But that’s the fun of being here.

So, when you get a bunch of college students together in an unfamiliar city begging to be explored, it has to be expected that three, four or five will eventually hop in a car one night and wind up getting lost. On most midnight rides, the searches are for fast food because, at some point during the day, we missed one of the free Dillard cafeteria meals because we were working on a news story.

Take Monday night for example. Larry Young, Traver Riggins, Kenneth Hawkins, Phillip Lucas and I piled into Larry’s blue Taurus and went looking for food. We were in search of this mythical 24-hour po’ boy place recommended by a friend.

I wasn’t on the phone when my riding partners got the information, but I was sure the friend was lying to us.

A 24-hour po’ boy place? In New Orleans? Fake.

During the first stop in our food run, we actually found a spot that was open 24 hours, on the corner in a sketchy-looking neighborhood near campus. Of course, we were all still dressed in our “New York Times attire”: button-up shirts, slacks or, in Traver’s case, a dress. So we already looked out of place.

Since there wasn’t a legitimate parking lot, we were forced to park behind the building … under a flickering streetlight … next to a Dumpster. And when we got out, we were accosted for change. All good signs for the night’s adventure.

When we entered the little hole-in-the-wall, the menu was randomly written on the wall behind the counter. Everything was in capital letters, but there was no real theme. The word “pancake” was next to the word “pepper.” The word “ham” was above “cheese steak.” “Turkey” was above “goat milk.”

“Yuck,” I thought to myself. I love my stomach too much to confuse it like that. We decided to leave, jumping on the highway to continue our mystical search.

After taking the wrong exit and making one complete circle through a neighborhood, we finally found our 24-hour po’ boy place.

As we crept closer, we saw the name of the joint, “We Never Close Po-Boys.”

“Ah, reassuring and fitting,” I thought to myself.
As we turned into the suspiciously dark parking lot, “We Never Close” was, well, closed.