It’s time to return to New Orleans

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BY JANE WOOLRIDGE /Knight Ridder Newspapers

NEW ORLEANS —New Orleans is alive and kicking, and it wants you back. Needs you back. Prehurricane, New Orleans hosted nearly 10 million tourists per year; in 2006, no one is hazarding a guess. Tours by Isabelle once toured 1,000 visitors per month; now it sees about 100.

Says superchef Paul Prudhomme, “I don’t think any (fine-dining restaurant) is breaking even.” Soon, even the insurance and government workers will clear out.

If you show up, the city will show you one terrific time. Since New Year’s, the weekend partyers are trickling back. The French Quarter looks pretty much as it did pre-Katrina, with its leafy gardens, curling iron balconies, gaudy bars and obnoxious T-shirt shops.

Museums in the Warehouse District — dedicated to Southern art, the Confederacy, D-Day and contemporary art — have reopened. Historic cemeteries made famous by voodoo queen Marie Laveau and author Anne Rice’s vampires are open for visits.

Uptown, funky boutiques along Magazine Street are packed, and so are neighborhood eateries like Upperline, Felix’s Uptown and Crepe Nanou.

Weekend patrons again are petting the surprisingly soft face of the baby white rhino at the Audubon Zoo. The Garden District is no more tattered than western Broward County in this post-Wilma moment.

Famous restaurants, including K-Paul’s, Antoine’s, Acme Oyster, Cafe du Monde, Mother’s and NOLA, have returned to their distinctive culinary ways, turning out blacked Cajun fish and cornmeal-dipped fried oysters and beignets smothered in powdered sugar. This city should come with a Surgeon General’s warning: Hazardous to your waistline.

Today — this very month — a visitor can come here and have nothing but fun. More than 22,000 hotel rooms have reopened at popular haunts like the Monteleone and Royal Sonesta; nearly all expect to be open by fall.

Of the city’s top tourist attractions, only the Aquarium has yet to reopen, with launch expected in June.

Driving from the airport, you’ll know a hurricane came through; more houses sport blue tarp roofs than not. But the floodwater is gone, the Superdome recapped (at least temporarily), the road signs in their proper places above the highways.

Sure, service may be a little slow, the streets a bit dirtier, and your hotel may lack a night concierge; only 144,000 of the city’s original 485,000 residents have returned, and some 60,000 tourism jobs now wait for workers, says Kim Priez, vice president of the New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau. Housing is limited and wildly expensive.

But as they say in The Big Easy, let the good times roll. It’s Carnival season and Mardi Gras kicks of on Fat Tuesday. Yes, the parties and parades go on.

Still, if you want to know about Katrina, it’s easy enough to find out. Just ask.

Everyone has a story, and everyone is still raw enough, bruised enough, to share it. The bartender who couldn’t see the waterline on his house — then realized it had been completely under water. Workers sleeping in cars or trucks (though invisible to tourists). The visitors bureau vice president now broke from having to pay off a suburban home that is trashed and may never be rebuilt. The stalwart Guccione sisters, who had to close their popular, 13-year-old mask shop in the Quarter, Little Shop of Fantasy, and now tend bar and cook with neighbors to get by. “I still cry every day,” says sister Laura.

Or the homeowner in the once-upmarket neighborhood called Lakeview, John Grout, who calls himself a “FEMA-nista.” His house — not far from one of the breaks in the flood walls — was flooded by nine feet of water.

Still, most people will tell you they’re “blessed” — blessed that it wasn’t worse, that they didn’t die, that their parents didn’t die. Many are also angry literally beyond words that their government — all of their governments — betrayed them so completely. Saddened and furious that so many of their fellow Americans have suggested that their city be left to its own folly.

Says Prudhomme, “When earthquakes hit the West Coast, you didn’t hear any of that.”

Barbara Robichaux, a guide on a new and controversial “Katrina Tour” arranged by Gray Line, puts it in perspective. Nearly in tears, she reminds it-will-never-happen-to-me tourists of how many years New Orleans had no storms, and of a false complacency that should strike a chord with South Floridians: New Orleanians thought they’d be gone three days, then home again to rebuild roofs.

Despite newspaper articles and books on the inadequate flood system, they never imagined that dozens of neighborhoods — poor, rich, middle class — might be forever lost. That all these months later, those neighborhoods still would have no electricity, no water, no plan for a future.

But on this recent night, the devastation seems far from the bars of the French Quarter, the Warehouse District, Uptown, the Marigny Fauberg.

On tawdry Bourbon Street, the jazz and rock and heavy metal spill into the streets. The clubs are beginning to fill with government and insurance workers, students just returned to local colleges, couples coming to town for a weekend of fun.

A Zydeco band plays in front of K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen — Prudhomme added it poststorm to give Chartres Street a spark of life. For the first time, the voodoo and cemetery tours have more guests than ghosts. Pat O’Brien’s bar is fast on its way to a human traffic jam.

In local bars like Vaughan’s, the crowds are singing and dancing their hearts out. Explains Robichaux, the tour guide, “You can only wear sackcloth and ashes so long.”

Learn about Katrinawww.graylineneworleans.com, (504) 569-1401, offers tours twice daily in minibuses holding about 20 guests each. Tours last three hours and visit several middle-class and upscale neighborhoods; the routes vary with local conditions. The cost is $35. Three dollars — the company’s profit, says spokeswoman Julee Pearce — go to Katrina relief efforts. Guests are invited to sign petitions and contact their national representatives.www.toursbyisabelle.com, (504) 391-3544, offers 3 ½-hour city tours by minivan that visit several affected areas. Tickets cost $49. “New Orleans isn’t fixed. I show them that we need help,” says owner Isabelle Cossart. Her company has re-hired two employees — each drives 3 ½ hours each way to work now — but doesn’t make enough money, she says, to give any to charity. “People call, I try to convince them to take plantation tours and see beauty, but they just want to see destruction, they want to see this.”

New Orleans

— Hear what the locals are really talking about Wednesday nights at Oswald’s Speakeasy, when actor Harry Anderson (TV’s “Night Court“) hosts town hall meetings. Around 8 p.m., 1331 Decatur St., (504) 218-5953.

Tours: Two companies offer New Orleans city tours that include areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.

— Gray Line Tours,

— Tours by Isabelle,

If you gowww.littleshopoffantasy.com

* Getting there: About 50 percent of the flights formerly operating to New Orleans are now flying.

* Open

— Most hotels in the French Quarter, Warehouse District and Garden District

— Most museums and attractions; check hours

— Most well-known restaurants

— Harrah’s Casino

* Closed

— New Orleans Aquarium; reopens in June

— New Orleans Museum of Art; reopens Friday

— Hyatt Regency, reopens 2007

— Ritz-Carlton, reopens September

— Commander’s Palace restaurant, opening late spring

— Brennan’s Restaurant, opening in spring

— Emeril’s Delmonico restaurant; opening late April

— Little Shop of Fantasy, now online at

— Cruise ships: Expect to resume sailings from New Orleans in Octoberwww.sonesta.com. Old World Style and attention to service in the heart of the French Quarter. Weekend rate, $179.www.ruedumaine.com, (866) 530-3517. Old City charm in the French Quarter, from $240.www.marriott.com, about $229; and Hampton Inn Convention Center, (866) 311-1200, www.neworleanshamptoninns.com, $69.www.kpauls.com. Paul Prudhomme’s mecca of Cajun cuisine. These days, you’ll likely find the chef out front greeting guests from his motorized wheelchair as a Zydeco band plays. Dishes such as blackened drum and shrimp etouffee remain spectacular. Entrees, $15.95-$35.95.http://www.restaurantstanley.com. Chef of the year Scott Boswell’s casual eatery near the French Market; open all three meals. Don’t miss the Eggs Stanley — benedict topped with oysters crusted in cornmeal. Under $13.http://www.restaurantstella.com. Boswell’s gourmet eatery reopens after long-planned renovations in early March with an Iron Chef’s dinner. Entrees, $24-$34.75.www.emerils.com. Emeril Lagasse’s French Quarter restaurant features his signature twists on traditional foods. Entrees, $26-$31.www.mothersrestaurant.net. Famed for its debris biscuits ($4), made from the ‘debris’ of the brisket. Entrees, $8-$18.www.rocknbowl.com.www.ddaymuseum.org. Adults, $14; ages 5-12, $6.www.ogdenmuseum.org. Adults, $10; ages 5-17, $5.www.auduboninstitute.org; (504) 861-2537.www.neworleanscvb.com

* Where to stay:

Most hotels are now open; all but a few will open by early summer. Rates are running about 10 percent below normal; expect them to drop further in April, when many of the insurance and government workers likely will clear out.

Some recommendations:

— Royal Sonesta Hotel, 300 Bourbon St.; (504) 586-0300;

— Rue Dumaine Guesthouse, 517 Dumaine Street;

—The Warehouse District combines chic and proximity to museums. Options include the artsy Renaissance Arts Hotel, (504) 613-2330;

* Where to eat

— K-Paul’s Kitchen, 416 Chartres St., (504) 524-7394;

— Stanley, 1031 Decatur St., (504) 593-0006;

—Stella!, 1032 Chartres St., (504) 587-0091;

— Galatoire’s, 209 Bourbon Street, (504) 525-2021. Locals’ favorite for Cajun cuisine. Entrees, $15.50-$33.

— NOLA, 534 St. Louis St., (504) 522-6652;

—Dick & Jenny’s, 4501 Tchoupitoulas St., (504) 894-9880. Locals crowd to get into this laid-back Uptown eatery featuring Southern specialties with a gourmet bent. Dinner entrees, $13-$22

— Mother’s, 401 Poydras St., (504) 523-2917;

* Night life

— Yes, the insanity along Bourbon Street remains, and up on Decatur, the House of Blues is open. Pick your poison.

— Locals head to the line of bars, eateries and music halls on Frenchman Street, just outside the French Market on Decatur Street.

— Vaughan’s Lounge, 800 Lesseps St., (504) 947-5562. Local jazz joint, where Kermit Ruffins sometimes plays.

—Rock n’ Bowl is a New Orleans institution, delivering on the promise of its name: music and bowling, too. 4133 S. Carollton Ave., (504) 482-3133;

* Attractions

— D-Day Museum: Even if you think World War II is just history, you’ll be enthralled with this lively museum that incorporates emotional oral testimonies and mesmerizing photographs. (504) 527-6012;

— Ogden Museum of Southern Art: Contemporary, folk art and crafts; live music Thursday evenings. (504) 539-9600;

— Audubon Zoo: Nearly all animals survived, including the signature white alligators. Open weekends. Adults, $12; children $7.

* Information

New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau, 800-672-6124;