Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published April 9, 2007 Willie Mae's Reopens: Restaurant Number 800 On April 1, at a dinner at RioMar, Willie Mae Seaton, the nonagenarian owner of Willie Mae's Scotch House, accepted the keys to her rebuilt restaurant. They came  from a group of people who raised money and physically worked to rebuild the old Mid-City neighborhood restaurant, led by John Currence, a restaurateur from Oxford, Mississippi. Willie Mae's officially opened to a large crowd last Wednesday. I finally got somebody on the phone over there over the weekend. By coincidence, it became Restaurant Number 800 to be added to the list of reopened restaurants since the hurricane. (I never add a restaurant to the open list unless I confirm it personally.) Willie Mae's has been around for many decades, a block behind Dooky Chase's, a half-block from Orleans Avenue. But only recently has it received such an enormous amount of publicity. Miss Willie Mae and her family have a simple but good menu of Creole neighborhood food, with fried chicken being the famous dish. For some reason, we've had a new flurry of restaurant openings in the past few weeks. Reaching the pre-storm total of 809 restaurants had looked like a goal for this year, then this summer, then this month. Now I think I may well happen this week. We're already at 802, and it's only Tuesday. Willie Mae's Scotch House. 2401 St Ann. 822-9503. © 2007 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com