NEW ORLEANS — A New Orleans restaurant has become iconic for its daily tradition, people come from all over the city to catch a glimpse of the window.
Mona Lisa restaurant's front window provides daily laughs and plenty of satire.
It's a morning ritual that started back on March 22, 2020, the day former Governor John Bel Edwards issued a stay-home order because of the rapidly spreading coronavirus. In such an uncertain time, Farrow Stephenson wanted to bring some brightness.
Stephenson said, "I keep writing signs and I don't know what to do with them, look at them all, look at how many I have, hundreds of thousands."
He went on to say, "We didn't really know what was going on, and everybody was all freaked out, we had to have people come in and pick up food. We didn't even know if we were going to open the next day."
"So I put a sign up saying, "We will be open tomorrow baring another biblical plague" and I just put it up in the window and all these people that had walked by... they were all just laughing and said that was really fun, and then I put one the next day... and it just grew, now I can't stop. It's like a sickness."
*Story continues after photo
More than four years later, he's still writing the signs that he sticks on the restaurant's front window. He says people stop him to show their love for his handwritten signs. He described one interaction saying, "He goes, I just want to you to know that in my family there's a cancer issue and we come by here every day to read your signs and it makes me laugh, so just keep doing what you're doing."
Evie Frutkin said, "My family has been coming here a lot and we love the signs." She says locals find joy in Stephenson's satire, saying "They're really funny, and they're just fun to read every day."
Others don't really appreciate Stephenson's opinions, he said, "One person gave me a one-star review on Yelp because of my sign, she didn't even come in here."
He says in this city, finding something to write is never difficult, "Ohhh like you really need inspiration, you just walk down the street in this town. You have someone asking you for that banana pie you used to have, I have never had a banana pie."
More than a thousand signs later, "I don't know if I would have gotten away with this in any other town but here."
When will he stop, "Till my hand falls off, I don't know." There's no telling, but his plan for all these signs, "If anyone has a suggestion, I tried to reach the Smithsonian they're not interested."
New Orleans restaurant's daily signs steal the spotlight
► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the new FREE WWL-TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.