Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published November 15, 2006 Click here for the current edition One Hundred Left To Open This morning I added Doson's Noodle House to the New Orleans Menu Daily Restaurant Index, our list of all open restaurants in the New Orleans area. That brought the total to 709. An odd number. A prime number, in fact. But a good number. Here's why. The day before Hurricane Katrina, we had 809 restaurants open that met the criteria for appearing on my list. (The place has to cook and serve a menu of food on premises, and not be a fast-food operation.) This means that all but 100 of the pre-storm restaurants are open. My prediction, which I've made before: We'll pass the pre-storm number sometime in 2007. As fine a success as that sounds, some restaurateurs are troubled by it. I've heard both from struggling restaurant owners and those whose establishment are booming the same dire prediction: that with all these restaurants in business, the competition will be so strong that some places will wind up closing. Particularly in the French Quarter, especially next summer. I don't believe it. Here's an amazing fact: of the restaurants that reopened since the hurricane, only one has closed permanently. We've had a very few more restaurants shut down, but then reopen shortly after with either a new name and menu, or the old one and new owners. Even the one that closed--Andrew Jaeger's on Decatur at Bienville--had an owner who is building a new restaurant elsewhere as we speak. And that's after the worst year in the modern history of the New Orleans restaurant business. Compared with New York or San Francisco or Atlanta or Houston, where enough restaurants shutter that food writers prepare regular lists of the losers, we're amazingly invulnerable. I'm not saying that there aren't restaurants in distress right now. I'm saying it's not abnormal for that to be true, and that we're doing far better than anyone--myself included--would have guessed a year ago. So, as Mr. B's, Tony Angello's, Mandina's, Gautreau's, and the rest of the Remaining One Hundred prepare to open (a big bunch will come in January), we're looking at the total restoration of the New Orleans restaurant scene. It's miraculous and very gratifying. Doson's Noodle House, formerly known as Chinese's Chinese Restaurant, was on Oak Street at the time of the storm. No flooding there. But for some reason, they've relocated to an area that had five or six feet of flooding: the vicinity of Canal and North Carrollton, across from Angelo Brocato's. It's a Vietnamese and Chinese restaurant that's pretty good, and the new location looks much better than the old.  Good to have them back. And very good news about the recovery of Mid-City. Doson's Noodle House. 135 N Carrollton Ave, 309-7283. © 2006 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com