Indoor Live Music, With Exceptions, Permitted in New Orleans for the First Time Since March

Welcome to p.m. Intel, your afternoon roundup of New Orleans food and restaurant news. Tips are always welcome, drop them here.

• In addition to allowing outdoor service at bars, New Orleans’s next phase of reopening, effective 6 a.m. tomorrow, October 17, allows indoor live music for the first time since March. Restaurants, indoor event venues, and concert halls, after obtaining a Special Event Permit, can host live music; bars are not permitted to do so. Concert halls can open for timed, seated events at 50 percent permitted occupancy or 250 individuals, whichever is fewer. Singing, karaoke, and wind-blown instruments are still prohibited indoors.
• The city’s annual restaurants promotion campaign, Coolinary, has been expanded to the fall, starting this Monday, October 19 and running through November 22. A number of restaurants who participated in the summer campaign voluntarily extended their deals through September and October, but the new campaign, called Coolinary Encore, lists more than 50 participating restaurants so far. Available for both dine-in and takeout, multi-course lunches are less than $22 and multi-course brunch and dinners are less than $40 per person.
• While making the case for more state and federal money to support New Orleans’s hospitality industry, the head of the city’s tourism agency reiterated a prior forecast by the Louisiana Restaurant Association that as many as half the city’s restaurants could shut their doors permanently in the coming months. His plea for extended government support came while announcing the agency’s new $1 million fall marketing campaign, which includes the Coolinary campaign and marketing targeted for those in driving distance.
• Despite the annual Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival going all-virtual this year, naturally, the food is still top of mind. A list of a dozen beloved vendors that normally participate including Vaucresson Sausage Company, Walkers BBQ, and Brocato’s Catering are making their typical festival offerings available to order for those “festing in place” this weekend, October 16 — 18.
• Waitr, the food delivery app that originated in Lake Charles, Louisiana and is now in many southern states, has added a service that essentially allows the company to collect a fee from diners even when they are dining at the restaurant. Calling it “tableside service technology,” the offering allows users to scan a QR code to access the restaurant’s menu, place an order, pay, and tip through the Waitr app, for full contactless service.

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