By Brenna Kielkopf

Wine, truffled crab claws, oysters and–probably– ghosts.  Tableau has been a magnet for tourists looking to blow some cash on a taste of French Quarter luxury since 2013.  The fine-dining restaurant is on the corner of St. Peter and Chartres, living in a building nearly as old as the city itself.  But even all that hasn’t been enough to keep tourists coming in Summer 2023.  Chris Schneider, a manager at Tableau, is worried about the heat: “A slow night for us may be sixty, seventy covers… Now a slow night for this summer was twenty covers”, that’s each person dining on a given night.  So it’s been the worst summer they’ve had– on par with summer 2020.  Maybe not quite as bad, actually; he says,“During Covid, you expected it! And you had a lot of government assistance.  You had a lot of things in place to help you through it.  But you don’t have that right now… it’s just, it is what it is.”  

Outside dining hasn’t looked remotely enticing in a few months, “A lot of people think of– when they come to Tableau– a beautiful view of Jackson Square.  They’d say, ‘let’s go sit out on the balcony’.  The inability to do that has definitely hindered dining here.  But that’s just one cog in the wheel of what’s brought a decrease in business as a whole”.

It’s too damn hot.  And, it’s too damn expensive.  

“I went to the Whole Foods on Magazine street the other day and I spent $140.  I didn’t buy much.  I didn’t buy liquor, no steaks”.  That’s the kind of thing a restaurant like Tableau needs a lot of, and it’s getting expensive.  “The cost of fish, the cost of shrimp, the cost of steaks, has risen drastically” at least partially, Schneider explains, due to global warming.  

Schneider likes to educate his staff about wine.  And now, it’s been changing along with seemingly every other aspect of business. “Wine is an agricultural product.  And agricultural products are very in tune with the weather.  You can tell that the world of wine is changing.  You’re seeing places like England produce good quality sparkling wine now”.   The wine that was always born in Bordeaux has moved North.  Shrimp and oysters– hallmark crops of New Orleans cuisine– are changing in a similar way. “Places on this globe that once were known for certain things are– slowly but surely– not going to  be known for that anymore.  And, there are new spots that will pop-up and be known for the same thing”  

Schneider’s proud of his ghosts.  He’s got one video in particular– caught on security camera footage, on the third floor of the restaurant, wine bottles fly off the shelves, spilling three feet away. Ghosts seem to live in the walls of Tableau; they must have made a home there sometime during the building’s 400-years.  Schneider says he doesn’t believe in them, but he’d like to.  Those ghosts saw a much different New Orleans; “You can go to the 1700’s to the 1800’s and there wasn’t that much of a change in where you harvested oysters or where you grew crawfish.  But now, you’re looking at the 1980’s to the 2023’s.  Now things have changed drastically”.  But, it is what it is, and he’s gonna have to roll with the punches. 

“Is it gonna get better?  I don’t know.  Global warming.  I mean, I’m not expecting it to get any better.  It’s only gonna get hotter and hotter.”