About The Index Less than a month after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Menu publisher Tom Fitzmorris published his first list of reopened restaurants. It had 22 names--all there were in those frightening days. The New Orleans Menu Restaurant Index has been updated daily ever since, becoming the definitive authority on which restaurants are back. Beyond that, it gave would-be customers all the information they needed to make their dining plans. Updated addresses and phone numbers, what kind of menu they'd find. While bad news continuously issued forth to the rest of the world about the dire state of affairs in New Orleans, Tom kept one strident message in front of the public: the restaurant scene in New Orleans is recovering rapidly, with resources as great as ever before. As things settled down and Tom revisited the restaurants, the listings included updated ratings--still the only restaurant ratings being published locally. Tom Fitzmorris writes the longest-running restaurant review column in America, published every week in New Orleans for 35 years. Beyond that, he is the host of the only long-form daily radio food show in the country. And the publisher of the New Orleans Menu Daily newsletter, which he sends out to thousands of subscribers every weekday. |
Pull My Readers To Your Restaurant Website Every day, thousands of New Orleans diners (as well as visitors to the city) check a unique resource to help them plan their restaurant adventures: The New Orleans Menu Restaurant Index. Every real restaurant* currently open in the New Orleans area is listed in the index. No closed (or not yet open) restaurant is included. No other local restaurant listing can make that claim. Not even the Yellow Pages. Now you can make your restaurant's listing stick out prominently (just like those last three words did) on the list. And provide a direct link to your restaurant's web site. The many people in the habit of shopping the restaurant scene using our list will be able to get much more information from you that way. If you've never seen the Index, click here to give it a glance. Note the restaurants that have already taken advantage of this new service. Don't have a web site? You really, really ought to get one. People--particularly younger diners--are using the Web more and more all the time. Until you get yours together, we'd be happy to make one up for you, including all the basic information about the restaurant and the complete menu. What's this cost? Whatever you think it's worth. I'm not kidding. My major goal is to do all I can to help the New Orleans hospitality industry back to robust health. That's why I started the Index in the first place. On the other hand, it's a lot of work keeping this thing up, and I don't sell advertising. I'd appreciate whatever donation you might want to make for this service. Depending on what you give, I'll let the link run on our site for anything from a year to infinity before I come back and ask you again. Please don't let a tight budget keep you from taking advantage of this unique resource for reaching out to new customers. The first step is to send the information. If you have a web site, its address is all I need. If you'd like me to build a page for you on our site, fill out all the parts of the form you'll find by clicking here. We require digital text of your menu for us to build a page on our site. Click below to pay by credit card or electronic check: If you prefer, send a check to: Tom Fitzmorris PO Box 1647 Abita Springs LA 70420 Thank you for being a dynamic part of our city's drive to renewing its vibrant culinary life! Tastefully yours, Tom Fitzmorris P.S.: Even if you're not taking advantage of our web-page linking service, click here to give us the latest information on your restaurant. I'll use it in my articles, listings, and radio shows to help give the most accurate facts to New Orleans diners. *What's a "real" restaurant? It's not a fast-food outlet. Or a coffeehouse, or a take-out-only window, or a bar with a few snacks. Or a school cafeteria, hospital food service, sno-ball stand, or hot dog roller in a gas station. It's a business whose primary function is to cook and serve breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. By that definition, New Orleans now has more restaurants than it did before the hurricane--a widely-quoted fact avidly publicized by the New Orleans Menu Restaurant Index. |