New Orleans Restaurants Recovering After BP Oil Spill

Still, David Pearson, a partner in Grand Isle, a Warehouse District seafood restaurant, is not resting easy. Not yet.

"We haven't exhaled at all," he said. "This is going to go on for another year."

Future historians may well describe the state of the New Orleans restaurant business at the close of 2010 as the post-traumatic stress stage following the oily summer of discontent.

The industry spent the better part of the year performing triage as chefs and restaurateurs struggled to navigate a seafood market upended by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. At the height of the disaster in June and July, it was all but expected that the damage done to Louisiana's coastal ecosystems would permanently disfigure the cherished dining culture that sprang from it.

To read the rest of the story, please go to: The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA).