Is New Orleans Ready for Tourists?

The insurance adjusters, Howells said, were good customers for him.

For many a repeat visitor, normal in New Orleans starts with breakfast at the Cafe du Monde, the iconic beignet palace on a corner of Jackson Square. The freshly fried square doughnuts, dusted in powdered sugar and washed down with chicory coffee, are as much a part of New Orleans as the wide Mississippi that bends away from the French Quarter a few yards away.

The capacious indoor and outdoor seating areas of the cafe were about half-filled on a Saturday morning earlier this month, with a small line at the to-go window. This normally high-volume operation seemed to be running at about half speed. Several tables near the kitchen were filled with idle waitresses, mostly matronly Vietnamese women chatting to each other in their native language.

Cafe du Monde seems to be doing well in the chase for scarce hospitality workers that is keeping many restaurants from running a full schedule, or even opening at all. "Help Wanted. All Positions" is a placard plea common in many windows, and several places are seating shorter hours or partial weeks. And it takes staff heroics to do even that.

"Let me tell you everything that's going wrong today," Adam Hawkins said with a laugh at the Clover Grill, the kind of dive hamburger joint where you can count on a fine salutary cheeseburger at 3 a.m. (From the menu: "No talking to yourself. Keep both hands on table.") Hawkins's cook didn't show up, so the dishwasher was at the grill. She could fry eggs, but not flip them, leaving sunny side up as the only option. And the Quarter's sketchy electricity had temporarily fried the ice cream machine. "We're coping," he said.

Some of the city's billboard tourist restaurants are still shuttered. Brennan's, for example, hopes to open before Mardi Gras and Commander's Palace in late spring or summer. But slowly, the culinary core reactor of one of America's great restaurant cities is beginning to burn. Bayona, Peristyle, Restaurant August and Upperline are among the top-drawer dining rooms back at work. In lower tiers, Arnaud's, an old-guard Quarter favorite, reports filled tables on weekend nights. Around the corner at the popular oyster bar called Remoulade -- a louder, hipper spinoff of Arnaud's -- the Saturday night wait for dinner was 30 minutes.

The front bar was filled with those watching the raucous pageant of Bourbon Street as they listened for their names to be called. The strolling couples and the howling fraternity types, framed by the backward neon script around the windows, could have been a pre-Katrina Saturday night crowd -- until a platoon of military police suddenly passed by, uniformed and packing sidearms, bringing things back up to date.

After supper is club time in New Orleans, and the Times-Picayune's weekend music calendar was filled with live acts, more than 70 of them over a three-day weekend. One functioning favorite is the Rock n' Bowl at Mid City Lanes, a bowling alley cum dance hall. The drive out, well away from the high ground of the French Quarter, is through a dark wasteland of empty houses and busted traffic lights. The club itself survived only because of its second-story location in a strip mall that was otherwise bombed out, surrounded by flood debris and chain-link barriers.

But inside, it was a familiar NOLA vibe, with the clattering of pins sharing the air with the seasoned licks of veteran New Orleans blues guitarist Snooks Eaglin. The stage was surrounded by dancers, and the crowd of beer buyers at the bar was two deep.

"We're packed every night," shouted assistant manager Adele Dauphin over the rocking and the bowling. "For a long time we were the only thing in Mid-City with power."

It was even more crowded back in Uptown at Tipitina's, one of the city's most popular live clubs. Under the red glare of the stage lights was Rebirth Brass Band, the one-time street ensemble that became a 20-year local institution with an international rep. Their booming, tuba-driven horn sound filled the club and shook a neighborhood long used to noisy nights. Cars filled the grassy median along Napoleon Avenue and the line to get in was down the block.

"Honestly, it feels pretty much the same these days," said Gabriel Market, a 25-year-old New Orleans resident who returned soon after the flood. "We'll see what happens in the long run, but around here they're making it happen."