After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, said Kim Severson in The New York Times, New Orleans Times-Picayune restaurant reviewer Brett Anderson was “quickly shifted from critiquing restaurants to reporting on efforts to rebuild them.” Today the restaurant scene in New Orleans is again flourishing, with “105 more restaurants than before the levees failed.” For his first review since Katrina, Anderson chose Mr. B’s Bistro in the French Quarter.
Happy days are here again, said Anderson in the Times-Picayune. Paul Prudhomme opened this restaurant in 1979, in his “pre-celebrity days,” and for two decades Mr. B’s flourished, serving casual, inexpensive, bistro-style food. Today it “looks, sounds, tastes, and smells more or less exactly like it did” before Katrina. The Gumbo Ya Ya is New Orleans comfort food—“sausage and tender chicken that’s clearly been pulled from the bone, bound by a thin, spicy gravy.” When it’s time to mop up the sauce from the barbecued shrimp, you’ll be searching the table not just for shrimp “but anything you can get your hands on.” Some disappointments included a watery iceberg wedge and runny grits served with a shrimp and bacon dish. But the kitchen’s classic desserts—pecan pie, bread pudding, and a molten chocolate cupcake—were as memorable as ever.
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