NEW ORLEANS — Buffa's Bar and Restaurant, the iconic saloon on Esplanade Ave., has been serving food and beer with live music for 84 years.
Facing the threat of closing, owners of the restaurant, which straddles the border between the Marigny and the French Quarter, blamed increasing rent and decreasing tourism for recent struggles to keep their doors open.
"After Jazz Fest, it just dropped off a cliff," Co-owner of Buffa's Cary Rogers said on Monday. "The summer's been atrociously hot and there's been no business. No one coming in, which left us to choose do we pay the staff, buy product, or pay rent?"
Now restaurant management is singing a different tune, as they tell community members on Tuesday that their restaurant may have been saved by patron response -- at least temporarily.
"I've been telling everyone, the way you want to help Buffa's is send everyone you know here," Rogers said Monday. "We're part of the community, we're here, we want to stay here."
Full statement from Buffa's on Tuesday morning:
"We are overwhelmed by the love and support shown by the community. This has re-energized the business, at least temporarily. THANK YOU!
Here's all we ask: make Buffa's a stop at least once a month. Tell your friends to stop in at least once a month. If enough people do that, we'll be OK. But do the same thing for other local, family-owned businesses. They are hurting, too. If you could find 3 or 4 places you love to go every month, and your friends did that as well, so many of the places we love in New Orleans would not be facing the ominous prospect of going out of business forever.
We tell our staff 'we will deal with the future when it gets here,' and then try to plan for it as best we can. But right now, we are ever so grateful for the support you have shown these past couple of days. We promise to hang in there as long as we can."