Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published August 26, 2006 Click here for the current edition An Open Letter To The Louisiana Restaurant Association This morning, an article came out through the Bloomsberg News Service that alleges that fifty percent of the restaurants in New Orleans are still closed. A source at the Louisiana Restaurant Association was credited with that information. I would like to persuade you that this is a misleading statistic that is doing a great deal of harm to our image as a great eating city in the rest of the country. In fact, I wonder where you're getting that number. If it's from the Department of Health and Hospitals, know that any business that sells prepared food--including gas stations with hot dog rollers as their only dish--qualify as restaurants to the DHH. While I sympathize with small operators with minimal, convenience-oriented menus, they are not what most people--locals or visitors--consider restaurants. Their absence from the scene is unfortunate, but it's insignificant compared with the absence of, say, Mr. B's. And we have only a very small percentage of few restaurants of the caliber of Mr. B's that are yet unopened. Most of the remaining ones will be back before the year is out. You probably know about my Restaurants Open list on my website. I am extremely diligent about its accuracy and its methods, and I submit that it gives a much more accurate picture of the state of the restaurant business than that half-closed statistic. The Restaurants Open list has a threshold for inclusion: the place must be a real restaurant, cooking and serving on premises. I don't include fast food places, coffeeshops or bars with minimal offerings. I do include local sandwich shops and neighborhood cafes. In other words, the criterion for a restaurant to make the list is that it's of real interest to people who like to eat. I do not require that it would be a place I would recommend, just that it be open and serving food above the convenience food level. Before the hurricane, there were 809 such restaurants in the metro area. As of this morning, 678 of those were open. That's 84 percent. As I go through my database, I see around 50 more restaurants that will be open by the end of the year, bringing us up into the 90s. That's as good as saying the whole community is back, with the exception of a few restaurants with special problems. This is a fact: someone coming to New Orleans right now with dining on his mind--even well below the gourmet level--will find the dining scene essentially every bit as strong as it was before the storm. I know and understand that the LRA must serve all its members, without discriminating between a McDonald's and Galatoire's. But taking that stance in broadcasting the state of the restaurant business to the world is not helping the restaurant business at all. I hope the LRA will come up with some other analysis to put out to the press concerning the recovery. The restaurant business has led the recovery in many ways, and is the only part of New Orleans that's really delivering what the public requires of it. Why make it look like anything less by focusing on the hole instead of the doughnut? © 2006 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com