NY Times.com has a Travel section entitled New Orleans Watch / A City Rebuilds. There you will find stories that will break your heart and stories that may move you to action. Under the recent Restaurant Reopenings section is a listing and an article that may get you on the road to support the Crescent City's tourism rebirth, despite the widespread devastation to be encountered.
Restaurant Reopenings / Kim Severson
Susan Spicer is finally back in the kitchen at Bayona.
Ms. Spicer, whose name often tops the list of New Orleans best chefs, had been spending time with her husband and children in Jackson, Miss., taking care of some medical issues, tracking down cooks and waiters who were evacuated and taking the temperature of the recuperating New Orleans business environment.
On Friday, Nov. 18, she reopened the French Quarter restaurant that for many national food critics has become the best example of modern New Orleans cooking.
"There's this underlying sense of it being an important thing to do, just in terms of trying to let people know this part of the culture is ongoing," she said. "Plus, it is really heartening for people to get out and see more businesses open and for locals to network."
Without tourists, New Orleans is losing more than $15 million a day in direct revenue, according to the governor's office. At Bayona, most of the phone numbers of guests who made reservations for opening night were local. It has had no calls from people staying in downtown hotels.
"What I've noticed is that we had a great push to get back and get rebuilt, but now we're at status quo for the moment," said Ms. Spicer's business partner, Regina Keever.
Once the holidays are over, restaurants will see more of an influx of both tourists and more residents, she said. Until then, the city's restaurants will largely be about connecting people who already live in New Orleans with each other.
This week, health officials said 54 percent of the retail food businesses in Jefferson Parish and 17 percent of those in Orleans Parish have been recertified. Eliminating fast-food restaurants, national chains and coffee houses, that translates to about 320 restaurants operating in the New Orleans area, according to Tom Fitzmorris, a local restaurant personality who is keeping a daily count on his blog at www.nomenu.com.
Ms. Spicer said that she did not expect those numbers to jump much before the Christmas holiday, but that in the meantime local residents were being treated to an abundance of good local seafood. She just bought 40 pounds of Gulf shrimp and some local oysters, too.
"The crab is running real good right now so a I put a crab salad on the menu," she said. "If people are eating in New Orleans right now, they're getting some great stuff."
More updates: Todd Price, New Orleans food critic and blogger at A Frolic of My Own (see my blogroll) recommends MetroBlogNewOrleans.
Another NYTimes Crescent City update entitled Seeing Life Outside New Orleans Alters Life Inside It is stimulating. Two points made in the article: 1) New Orleanians are statistically people who grew up there and who probably didn't know much about life elsewhere. 2) Now that they've lived in Lafayette and Houston they've seen cities not totally saddled with corruption and ill schools. 3) People might begin to demand changes from the city's rulers. See the article at Seeing Life Outside New Orleans Alters ....
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