Easy to read ratings for quality and value help locals and tourists avoid dining disappointments and overpriced restaurants as they discover the city's best dining establishments.
Tom Fitzmorris was born in New Orleans on Mardi Gras. So a career writing and broadcasting on the pleasures of eating came naturally. He writes the longest-running restaurant review column in America by a single author, published every week since September, 1972.
He's better known, though, for talking about food on the radio. His program airs for three hours a day, six days a week, on WWWL (1350 AM) and WWL (105.3 FM). "I'm not sure of that much radio time spent on food will work," he says. "It's only been on the air since 1988."
Tom writes and publishes the New Orleans Menu, a newsletter published every weekday online at NOMenu.Com. It covers the whole New Orleans food scene: restaurant reviews, recipes, top-ten lists, a calendar of local food events, a daily food almanac, and his Dining Diary. "It's what's now called a blog, but I've written it since decades before that word was invented," he says.
He's the author of sixteen restaurant guides, four cookbooks, and a memoir. The most recent include the fifth edition of "The Unofficial Guide to New Orleans" (Menasha Ridge Press, 2008) and "Tom Fitzmorris's New Orleans Food: 250 of the City's Best Recipes for Cooking at Home" (Stewart, Tabori and Chang, Second Edition, 2010). The memoir--which focuses on the reaction and recovery of the restaurant scene in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, as well as other major turning points in the city's culinary past--is "Hungry Town" (Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2010).
Every week, Tom convenes local food-and-wine aficionados for the New Orleans Eat Club, a series of dinners in the restaurants of the city. A more-than-decent cook in his own right, Tom stages several annual dinners for various charities throughout the year.
Except for the six weeks after Katrina, Tom has lived his entire life in New Orleans. He attended Jesuit High School and is a graduate in Communications from the University of New Orleans (1974). He is married to the former Mary Ann Connell. They and their two children, Jude and Mary Leigh, live near Abita Springs, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. Good wild mushrooms grow in the woods around his house.
