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Inexpensive, unpretentious neighborhood cafes are an important part of dining out in New Orleans. Since Hurricane Katrina, we have had more new openings in that category than among gourmet restaurants, even of the bistro kind.
Look down the list and you'll pick up a clear emphasis on sandwiches, pizza, barbecue and fried seafood, all of which have been steadily improving at a lively pace for the past few years.
We are getting new approaches to all those familiar foods. And we had better get that, what with the way that $10 hamburgers and $12 po' boys are proliferating.
This list comprises the top dozen of casual restaurants to open in 2013:
1. Blue Crab, 7900 Lakeshore Drive
1. Brisbi's, 7400 Lakeshore Drive
We begin with a tie for first place in a very important category: casual fried and boiled seafood at the lake. The worst loss from Katrina in our restaurant world was the destruction of all the seafood houses at West End Park. They will never come back. So the opening of the Blue Crab and its competitor Brisbi's was exciting news indeed.
Both front the New Basin Canal, just off Lake Pontchartrain. Both are on Lakeshore Drive, south of the chain restaurant Landry's. Both are locally owned and each is managed by a guy...