Marylanders struggling to find work might want to consider the service industry, because in the Big Easy, finding good help is hard to come by.
The Gumbo Shop, on high ground in the French Quarter, remains a gorgeous traditional New Orleans-style Spanish stucco restaurant. But like so many restaurants here, it is struggling with the inability to attract service industry workers.
Built a year after the city?s Great Fire on Dec. 8, 1794, the 20-foot vaulted ceilings, twirling fans and courtyard filled with marble tables and wrought iron chairs ooze charm. The fried alligator appetizers, jambalaya, crawfish and Southern pecan pie are mouth-watering dishes, but the lines out the front door on Sunday night hid the truth.
The thick brown, spicy, sweet gumbo ? voted the best in the city for 25 years ? hasn?t suffered, but the staff and business have since Hurricane Katrina hit and levees burst 16 months ago.
“Oh yes, we?re still short-handed, struggling to hire staff,” said hostess Gerry Murphy, who?s been at the Gumbo House for six years. “We lost two cooks in the back of the house, and we lost a bunch of servers. Nobody got hurt, and no one had family that died ? that?s not what I mean. They just had to evacuate and don?t have a place to live.”
Much of the French Quarter?s revenue remains away as well. Murphy said The Gumbo Shop is only doing about 60 percent of the business it did prior to Katrina.
“If you are at the French Quarter from the street everything looks fine, but it?s misleading,” said recent graduate Andrea Sparks, who lives in Washington and is part of the University of Maryland marching band rebuilding team. “There are ?hiring? signs in every window. At the Acme Oyster House off Bourbon Street, the sign said, ?Waitress available sometimes.? ”
At the Café du Monde, an all-night café au lait and beignet institution since the early 1860s, waiter Seth Gautreaus said “it was like a ghost town this summer. I had a lot of friends in the hospitality industry, and most of the hotel and restaurant workers in this city lived in the middle-class neighborhoods that took the worst of the flooding.”
“They lost homes. Those are people that can?t afford to rebuild,” Gautreaus said. “Now, they?re scattered from everywhere ? who knows if they?ll be back.”
See more photos of the University of Maryland marching band working in New Orleans on Chris Ammann’s photo blog.
