I spent enough time in New Orleans in the years that followed Hurricane Katrina to have told the New York Times what they discovered on their own. In this article, the Times' Sam Sifton concludes that the Crescent City's restaurant scene is incredibly robust these days:. . . there are roughly 1,000 restaurants in New Orleans now, up a cool couple of hundred from before the storm . . .
And for a critic on the prowl for an authentic taste of the city in full springtime bloom, surprises abounded. One of the most purely joyful and purely New Orleans restaurants of the moment is Emeril's, a place run by a television chef who was born in Fall River, Mass., and lives mostly in New York City. Another, Cochon, is devoted not to the Creole cosmopolitanism of the city center, but to the Cajun traditions of the bayou and backwaters outside of town, in the tidal soup of southern Louisiana.
The article has several recommended restaurants at the very end.
