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IN a city grappling with crime, an economic slump and a devastated infrastructure, a closed cafe seems like a small blow. But losing the simple solace of a cup of coffee is symbolic of the day-to-day disquiet in this city post-Katrina.

Before the hurricane, a line of hungry patrons would spill out of the doors of Croissant d'Or Patisserie every morning.

Now, in a post-hurricane trend that has plagued cafes across the city, the French Quarter bakery's staff has dwindled from 16 to four. It's reflective of a citywide labor force that is 30% smaller today than a year ago.

The staff shortage has forced the business to close its doors Mondays and Tuesdays and shorten its hours the rest of the week. The owners even shut down for most of August, traveling to France; Montreal; and a host of American cities in search of qualified cooks.

Meanwhile, loyal customers eagerly wait for it to reopen.

"It's like a meeting place," explains Rose Marchal, who owns Croissant d'Or with her husband, Gerard. "Usually the first conversation is, 'How's your home?'…. Usually some part of the conversation is about how you're coping."

A year after the storm, tourism in the city is still finding its feet. It's been about 40% of normal this summer, according to the New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Only one-third of the city's restaurants and food stores have reopened. In June, the food service industry employed 39,200 in the New Orleans metro area, compared with 57,500 a year earlier. But the hospitality industry shows signs of life: Eighty-five percent of hotels are back in business, according to a recent report from the Brookings Institution.

Yet New Orleans continues to struggle with the small, almost noble touches that distinguish the city.

Just across the street from the bakery is the family-run Hotel Villa Convento. Before Katrina, the hotel served a daily continental breakfast that included fluffy croissants from its culinary neighbors.

April Campo, who works at the hotel for her parents when she's not in school, remembers fetching trays of croissants for the hotel guests — she treated herself too, she said, three times a week.

"It kind of reminded me of the show 'Cheers,' " she said. "It was family; everybody knew you."

Picking up pastries at a side entrance to the kitchen, Campo got a backstage glimpse of a sight invisible to most customers. "It was always fun to go through the kitchen and see how hectic it is behind the scenes," she said. "They make it look so mellow out front…. In the back, everybody's running around like chickens with their heads cut off."

Such scenes have changed dramatically for small cafes — while workers disappear, owners put in marathon shifts, usually working every open-for-business hour and then some.

Although they are open only seven hours a day, Gerard Marchal works at least 12 hours every business day, and Rose puts in 10.

Donna Shay, general manager of Café Beignet, can sympathize. She splits her 50 to 60 hours a week between the business' two open French Quarter locations; the third remains closed.

Both open locations lost half of their staffs after Katrina and found few or no replacement workers. Even raising base wages from $6 an hour to $8 hasn't helped.

"I run ads in the paper all the time and just don't get any response," Shay said. "At this point, it doesn't make a difference how much you pay people — there are no people."

Café Beignet and other coffee shops regularly get applicants for unskilled labor, such as dishwashers, but the shops generally need trained staff, such as chefs.

Despite employment struggles, most of the Quarter's cafes are back in business, though with shorter hours. Many reopened their doors in late 2005, including Café Du Monde in October and CC's Coffee House in December. La Madeleine, a Dallas-based chain, did not reopen its French Quarter location.

"Hey, chief," Giovanni Zedda greets a mailman from his regular table at Cafe Fleur de Lis, another French Quarter coffee shop.

Zedda comes for breakfast a few times a week, but he wasn't always a customer. Before Katrina, he worked across the street at the Chartres House Café, which is operated by the same owners.

When he returned after the storm, he left to open his own Italian restaurant, Tiramisu, just a few blocks away.

*

'You keep working'

ALTHOUGH he loves owning a business, the work is grueling. Zedda often has to prepare food in the kitchen and then serve it to the tables himself.

He gets to work at 9 a.m. and stays past midnight, seven days a week. When he can scrounge a spare hour, he refuels in the morning with the familiar faces at Fleur de Lis.

"The only way you can make some money, you keep working," he said, dragging on a cigarette he bummed from the Fleur de Lis cook.

The space he bought for his restaurant belonged to another eatery that didn't reopen after Katrina.

Zedda faces the same challenges finding and keeping staff as the cafes. He opened Tiramisu in January with only two other employees; now his help totals four.

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