Editor's Note: FE&S'Sr. Associate Editor visited New Orleans earlier this spring to attend a conference and research a story. As part of her visit, Amelia was able to see a decent portion of the city and visit with a number of people that make up its hospitality community. The following is a first-person account from her trip.

There's one noticeable difference in the tourist area of town, however. The bars might be packed, but so many tables at restaurants still sit empty. It doesn't help, either, that many of the city's restaurants traditionally have large dining rooms with enough space to house the year-round parties that escalate during Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. More filled tables would mean more wait staff are needed, and therein lies a nagging problem among NOLA restaurants.

People in general across the country complain that housing problems have strained businesses, but sadly, in The Big Easy this direct impact couldn't be more obvious. Sitting at one restaurant bar, a group of young people from the area told me they were still trying to close deals on condos but no insurance companies would provide the coverage necessary to secure the mortgage.

And, driving out of downtown into the neighborhoods, FEMA trailers still populate the front lawns of the seemingly endless rows of houses marked with black and red “X's,” indicating military personnel inspected homes after flood waters receded. Every now and then you'll find construction crews and some brand new houses, but they merely speckle the miles upon miles of residential area pummeled by catastrophic floods. Houses that used to sit virtually on top of each other, now have gaping holes in between them, where only grass has come back after wrecking crews bulldozed the damaged property.

If cooks, servers, hosts and restaurant managers can't find places to live, how can people expect them to make it to work or seek new jobs at the restaurants? Why would anyone come to New Orleans to work given this case?

That's where the negativity ends. Despite the struggle New Orleans restaurants face, they have two things going for them: love and loyalty. Love and loyalty literally seem to seep from the warm-colored walls at Dickie Brennan's Bourbon House, where sunshine pours in from the floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking NOLA's main drag, making its way to the smiling faces on the servers, hosts, bartenders and cooks in the back kitchen who have stuck by each other through the best and worst of times. It's in the way one staff member talked to me about her dedication to the rest of her team, to the restaurant and to her city.

You can taste that love in the raw oysters plucked from the Gulf seemingly moments earlier. You can taste love at John Besh's restaurant Luke, in the buttery croque monsieur presented prettily on a wooden chopping board. And you can taste it in the okra-speckled gumbo and perfectly, crispy fried chicken at Dooky Chase's, where 85-year-old chef/owner/cookbook writer/cooking show host Leah Chase never leaves the kitchen. Simply put, the food in New Orleans tastes like the person who made it for you really, truly cares about you.

That's the New Orleans way, according to Dickie Brennan, and just about anyone would agree. At a bourbon-tasting event at Bourbon House, Brennan tells me that while many people may have been wrapped up in all the negative aspects of Katrina, his team and so many others throughout town were busy coming together to clean up.

“It's sort of like when you clean out your closet in the spring,” he said. “Except, the whole city was performing that exercise. It made us stronger people as a result. There are so many local heroes in New Orleans.”

Brennan doesn't cite himself as a local hero, but cleaning up his restaurants as fast as he could; handing out free meals for the community after the storm; helping his staff find places to live; and supporting them in whatever way he could shows that he is indeed a hero.

The dining room at Dooky Chase's with Leah Chase's extensive African-American art collection.

Taking a peak at the kitchen, I found it to be clean, spacious and updated-looking with equipment that looked either new or nicely refurbished. There was some empty space that might have resulted from tossing old equipment out, but the important pieces, like the fryers and the range where pots of gumbo simmer, all remained in order. Even without full-service, the take-out business booms as New Orleans residents tell me they constantly pine for Chase's food. But thanks to an exclusive, one-day opening for conference attendees in town, there was nothing quite like sitting down in a beautiful dining room and having a heaping pile of piping hot fried chicken and oysters served literally straight from the fryer.

Although Chase wouldn't even step out of the kitchen (restaurant staff said she's been encouraged to take breaks but never does), the soft-spoken woman with white speckled hair, and a clean, pressed apron gave a beaming smile and a hearty wave, thanking us for our business. If that's not hard work and a love of cooking, I'm not sure what is. Staff shortages are rumored to be blamed for Dooky's delayed reopening, but looking at dedicated staff that were there, it's no question that Dooky's will come back in full swing.

Outside of the restaurants, a sense of love and loyalty pervades everywhere around town in the way neighbors treat neighbors, and in the way neighbors treat visitors. It's not uncommon for many people, including myself, to visit the dynamic city for the first time, and declare their fantasies of staying forever. At Ernst Café, a popular hangout among locals on the outskirts of the French Quarter, Jeff the bartender told me that was his story. “I moved here for a girl, and after a year she left,” he said. “But I stayed. That was 10 years ago.”

Along Magazine Street where neighborhood restaurants and bars dot the sidewalks, locals packed the places to the gills, while bartenders poured, cooks cooked and servers ran about feverishly. Business, certainly, is good in these parts. Now, it's the French Quarter's and downtown New Orleans' time to shine.