Despite the approaching storm, restaurants keep cooking in the Crescent City

The job of cooking for New Orleanians is, under normal circumstances, famously well-executed. But as New Orleans morphed into a ghost town over the weekend, food became as difficult to come by as every other necessity.

By Saturday, Aug. 30, night, most restaurants in New Orleans were boarded up, as even those with plans to stay open through dinner closed early in response to rampant reservation cancellations and employees' desire to evacuate.

Most of the exceptions were in the French Quarter, where restaurants such as GW Fins, Stella! and Cafe Maspero were open for dinner. And, bars, such as Cooter Brown's, The Delachaise and Molly's on the Market were also serving food.

In one corner of Uptown, it felt almost like a normal weekend night. Patois and Clancy's sit a stones throw from each other on Webster Street. Both served their full menus to well-heeled holdouts happy to distract themselves with marinated calamari salads, pan-sauteed sweetbreads and fried smoked soft-shell crabs.