Checking the Restaurant Numbers in New Orleans

Art Levine's wonderfully heartfelt post regarding the tenuous condition of New Orleans' black community includes a questionable statistic:

Less than half of the city's 3,000 restaurants have reopened.

Yet Tom Fitzmorris, the local restaurant reviewer and proprietor of -- how's this for unique? -- a daily radio show about food and cooking, keeps a running tab of open restaurants on his website. The total excludes fast-food places and chain operations, and by his count, the city's restaurant census is nearing three-quarters of pre-Katrina numbers, with notable holdouts -- Commander's, Brennan's, Dooky Chase -- on track to reopen within weeks or months. Tom says this far exceeds the expectations that were CW six months ago. Similarly, many restaurateurs who once said they were not reopening have reconsidered. AND -- at least seventeen high-quality new restaurants have opened since the disaster. Imagine the balls of people opening new restaurants in this environment. There are many bad-news stories about New Orleans, but the restaurant scene isn't one of them.