Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published March 14, 2006 Click here for the current edition St. Bernard Parish Gets Its First Reopened Restaurants If you've driven through Arabi or Chalmette since the first of the year, you know what the scene is. At a passing glance, everything appeared to be damaged, but not always severely. Look closer, though, and keep looking. . . and it became clear that almost nothing was working and nobody was living there. How could it be otherwise? Much of St. Bernard was under a flood deep enough to produce double digits in feet. The water rushed in powerfully enough to topple trees  and buildings, and then stood for a couple of weeks or more. And there was that oil spill on top of the water in some areas. But that was two or three months ago. Now, incredibly, as the area still struggles with few services of any kind and almost no houses that can be lived in, a couple of restaurants have managed to reopen. One is the Flour Power Confectionery (2101 Paris Rd., 276-9095). It makes an ambitious assortment of baked goods, as the name implies. But it also prepares a reasonably full menu of breakfasts, sandwiches, platters, and daily specials. I've not been there, but a regular correspondent whose taste I trust says it's delicious. If you can get a table, which appears to be a challenge. The other is a pizza-and-sandwich place, Ben's Pizza, in Meraux. (2805 E Judge Perez Dr., 277-8605. ) I hear that it takes 20 minutes to work through the line to get an order in, so popular is it. Both places are doing tremendous volumes with the St. Bernard people, who are hell-bent on returning to their homes, no matter what. I find this kind of milestone very encouraging. The restaurants have consistently been the pioneers in the recovery, appearing in neighborhoods often before the people who live there do, acting as points from which the rebuilding emanates. The reopenings are now moving into the wet zones, and as they do they open up those areas to the people who want to return to them. I stick with my prediction that by 2008 the New Orleans area population will reach parity with what it was before the storm. © 2006 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com