OZARKSFIRST

NEW ORLEANS (AP) A seat at the 182-year-old French Quarter restaurant that invented Oysters Rockefeller and mastered Baked Alaska is virtually impossible to get this week as the first NCAA men's Final Four without pandemic restrictions in three years comes to this historic port city near the mouth of the Mississippi River.

It's a simultaneously joyous and frustrating time for Lisa Blount, whose family operates Antoine's - a restaurant which opened in 1840, only had French menus for most of its existence, and has a long tradition of hosting Mardi Gras "royalty."

Because of challenges to finding and training staff since the pandemic, bookings have been limited to about half of the upwards of 600 per night there would normally be for an event this big - meaning half as many orders of Pompano Ponchartrain with crab meat or Filet Marchand de Vin.