Restaurants in New Orleans are hurting as badly for staff as they are for customers.
Many of the city’s hospitality employees still haven’t returned since being evacuated, so restaurants are left hiring people with little or no experience.
Some restaurant owners traveled an hour away to Baton Rouge to lure wait staff and cooks to the Big Easy.
It’s nearly impossible to go into a restaurant without hearing staffers complain about being short of cooks or wait staff.
Many waiters are working double shifts as much out of necessity as the extra money.
Popular restaurants are forced to close early simply because they lack the staff to be open much past 8 p.m. A few restaurants are open with a limited menu, and some finer restaurants reopened with paper table clothes rather than cloth.
Of course, the few people who are in the city appear eager to cut some slack for restaurants and their staff.

That’s certainly true for Eileen and Frank O’Sullivan.
The St. Petersburg couple decided to spend about a week in New Orleans to help the local economy.
Despite the devastation, they are having a blast.

If there’s a touristy thing to do, they’ve either done it, or it’s on the agenda. There will hardly be a restaurant they haven’t tried by the time they leave.
“We came to spend money,” Eileen said this morning, while eating breakfast at River’s Edge restaurant next to Jackson Square.