Famed restaurant opens in Big Easy
NEW ORLEANS – Scaffolding still surrounds a huge hole in the southeast wall, the staff is a shadow of its former size, only two of 15 sprawling dining rooms are functioning, half the specialty dishes have been lopped off the menu and there was a last-minute scramble to find shells for the signature Oysters Rockefeller.
But Antoine’s Restaurant reopened its heavy wooden doors Thursday night, exactly four months after Hurricane Katrina shuttered the historic French Quarter icon and forced New Orleans to its knees. And in this ruined city famished for any morsel of good news, the return of Pompano Pontchartrain and Baked Alaska was a cause for some relief, and even elation.
“Thank God we are back,” said James Liuzza, a 20-year Antoine’s employee and the restaurant’s new maitre d’, whose predecessor drowned when Katrina’s floodwaters filled his home to the ceiling. “Maybe a little bit of normal is coming back to New Orleans.”
Normal, however, remains a relative term in New Orleans, a city where less than a quarter of the former residents have returned. Officials count 360,124 requests for housing, the hospitals have just 140 available beds, and Bourbon Street still echoes like an empty canyon.
The struggle of Antoine’s‘ two top managers, Rick Blount and Michael Guste, to resurrect the restaurant founded by their great-great-grandfather 165 years ago mirrors New Orleans’ efforts to rebound from the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history.
Blount and Guste had to repair extensive storm damage to the restaurant’s historic buildings, battle insurance companies for reimbursement, and reconnect with their suppliers, many of whom suffered severe damage themselves.
The managers tracked down their 131 employees, most of whom became refugees when the hurricane flooded and destroyed their homes; six remain unaccounted for. When government agencies failed to provide temporary housing, the restaurant’s human resources director found enough trailers, rental apartments and bunks on cruise ships to accommodate those among a core staff of 30 cooks, busboys, dishwashers and waiters who needed a place to live.
By opening its doors on Thursday night, Antoine’s beat out such fabled five-star competitors as Brennan’s, Galatoire’s and Commander’s Palace, all of which remain among the 80 percent of New Orleans restaurants that are still shuttered.
But in a city still largely bereft of the monied local residents, free-spending tourists and expense-account conventioneers who formed the lifeblood of the economy, no one believes this race will necessarily go to the swift. Antoine’s is bracing for months of red ink.
“We have lost prime-season business, holiday business and our beloved local clientele,” said Guste, Antoine’s general manager. “We will just be getting back on our feet when the traditional slow summer period hits. And then the Gulf waters will be heating up and it will be hurricane season again. It would just be unthinkable to have another punch to this city.”