Here’s one part of the New Orleans restaurant business that hasn’t changed through the pandemic – new additions. In neighborhoods all across town, new restaurants have stacked up.
At first, this seems to go against so much of what we’ve been seeing and hearing through the crisis.
After all, it’s been a time of grinding turmoil for the hospitality sector everywhere, and that’s been sharply felt in New Orleans with its tourism-based economy. And yet, the flow of new restaurants continued throughout and soon resumed its customary, frenetic pace.
But ask the people behind these new restaurants why they’re opening now, and they offer a range of stories that have long propelled the restaurant sector’s growth here – a mix of ambition and necessity, change and opportunity.
A few examples: at Alma in the Bywater, chef Melissa Araujo serves Honduran food with a modern culinary edge. She’s seen that style propel other cuisines, and she decided it was time for Honduran food to get its due, pandemic or no.
Across town, the Jamaican restaurant 14 Parishes opened on Oak Street because the young couple behind it saw a dream property available after another restaurant closed. Now Lauren and Charles Blake are serving an ever-growing menu of jerk dishes and rum cocktails.
And then there are restaurant projects that were too far along to call off when the pandemic hit. That’s why the taco and cocktail spot Vals opened on Freret Street just three months after the city’s first shutdown orders. It started with outdoor service only and a big question over whether anyone would come. They did, hungry to try something new and perhaps just do something that felt like normal times when times were anything but.
It was an early illustration of what many other new restaurants have learned since — as long as New Orleans people can dine out safely, the enduring interest in what’s new will still bring them in.
