Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published August 29, 2007 Let's Insist On Better, Now Two anniversaries occurred this week that had me thinking in a more general way than usual about the stuff I write here. The first was the two-years-ago of the hurricane, which escaped nobody's notice. The second is more personal: the thirty-fifth anniversary of my restaurant review column, first published September 1, 1972 and weekly ever since. Significant dates can be made into turning points. Look what happened on July 4, 1776. Or even August 24, 1995. (Windows 95's premiere, if you forgot, changed the way most of us work at our desks.) I'm calling this a corner-turning date for my function in the culinary community. My conscience has been telling me for months now that it's time to stop excusing ourselves with the story of that traumatic near-drowning of two years ago, and to get on with the job at hand. The job at hand, you know, is to turn this town once again into the premier American place to visit for people who like to eat. Above all other businesses here, that one will do the most--in the medium term, at least--for the economic health of our city. More than a few people take issue with that thesis. But the facts support it. Tourism has been the leading business in New Orleans for a long time, and a powerful and growing profit producer that employs a lot of people. The restaurant industry specifically is the number one private employer in the New Orleans area. The linchpin of tourism here is the restaurant community. Even people whose primary reason for coming to New Orleans is for a meeting, a music festival, or historical interest always make dining out a big part of their plans. The eating here is the most commonly-cited explanation as to why meetings in New Orleans draw a greater percentage of possible attendees than the same meetings in other cities. Also, of our entire repertoire of attractions to our potential customers, the restaurant scene is the only one that is clearly world-class. Our hotels and convention facilities are fine, but they don't stand out the way our restaurants do. It was no surprise that the restaurant business was second only to the port in the rapidity with which it returned to full function following the hurricane. In fact, it did more than just return: it increased its service. As of this writing, 854 real restaurants are open in the New Orleans area. We had 809 the day before the storm. While the total number of hours restaurants are open around town is still probably lower than it was before the storm, it's not by much. It doesn't matter, anyway. The full pallette is there, from the little poor boy and red beans joints everybody was so worried about to the major players. The restaurants with big fixing up to do did it right. Antoine's, for example, is in the middle of the most extensive restoration and improvement program of its 167-year history. It will very likely be the most expensive such project ever undertaken by a single restaurant here, running into eight figures. But there's a problem. We have been excusing it, turning our heads, and tolerating it. But the time has come to stop all that, admit it, and fix it. It's that the food and service in our restaurants are not as good as they used to be. And we can't afford that anymore. There, I said it. First time you've heard that from me. Oh, yeah, there was a good excuse. For two years, restaurants haven't had enough personnel. Many of the rare new hires had skills far below what was typical before the storm. Nothing could be done about this. The fantastic loss of housing, particularly in Orleans Parish, turned recruitment of staff into something like searching for water in the desert. While we clearly have a long way to go on the housing front, an unexpected situation has occurred. Most of the restaurants that have been open for a year are more are telling me that they're fully staffed. I was alerted to this by a number of returning cooks and waiters who were surprised that jobs weren't easily available. I found that so hard to credit that I called a restaurant where one of these guys had applied, to check his story. Indeed, the restaurant had no openings. Nor is there a severe lack of customers. Summer, which everyone in the business had been dreading, has turned out to be much better than expected. Not particularly worse than a typical summer of a few years ago. What's left to worry about? The food supply? That never was a problem. Even oysters were great all summer. Expense and complication of doing business? That's real. The fantastic ignorance on the part of government, particularly in Orleans Parish, of the needs of the tourism industry is holding our restaurateurs back. (I offer as a fast example the embarrassing condition of St. Charles Avenue, one of our major showpieces.) More than a few restaurants have jerked themselves back to pre-K levels of excellence and exceeded them. Some particularly fine examples of this include Commander's Palace, all of Emeril's and John Besh's restaurants, Bayona, and Broussard's. But too many restaurants are still hanging back. They're failing to train all these new people intensively. They're still using the skeletal menus from their reopening months. They're not opening for lunch. (That's a big lack around town right now.) Even worse, we're seeing some real crap ingredients and techniques out there. More restaurants than you can believe are buying prepared dishes that only need to be heated and plated. How can pasteurized, canned, tasteless Indonesian crabmeat be served in good conscience here? The practice of making a huge batch of soup or sauce and going with it for days on end, regardless how lumpy it gets, has returned with a vengeance. A few weeks ago, the editor of CityBusiness, where my column has appeared for the last twenty-six years, asked me a question that took me off guard. "Have you become mellower in your reviews since the storm?" I knew the answer, but I had to think of how to word it. I said, "Yes. yes, I have. I've felt that I was dealing with a sick person who needs special care until he can work again." I think we both had the same thought. The patient is healthy now. In fact, he's already raised his demands of us in terms of higher menu prices. We need to insist that he get the standards back up to what they should be, for the good of our city. I plan to do that, as I begin the thirty-sixth year of writing these (let's face it) words. In the big picture, they're of minor importance in terms of effect on the world or literary merit. And income production (really, I should have moved on to other employment a long time ago if that were my main motivation). But I'm compelled to continue my small role in this essential local social interaction. © 2007 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com