In a town where legislators have been known to proclaim paid-for meals a principal draw to public service, this was an especially unpopular move. Last week, State Representative Charmaine L. Marchand of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans said the limit would force her and her colleagues to dine at Taco Bell, and urged that it be pushed to $75 per person, to give them “wiggle room.”

No public groundswell took up her cause, and the $50 limit held.

Meanwhile, the mood is feverish but still merry at Ruth’s Chris. A recent night found it packed with lobbyists and legislators. With the Capitol five miles away, its popularity will be threatened when the new rules go into effect on March 30. But the lavish springtime banquets held by lobbyists, where tables groan with choice Louisiana seafood, do not appear to be immediately endangered.

In the legislative chambers, the votes for this ethics makeover were mostly unanimous, though the sarcastic commentary suggested that enthusiasm might not have been what was motivating legislators. Mr. Jindal has public opinion on his side, however.

“I want to know who’s doing the corrupting,” a state senator, Francis Thompson, said, mock-seriously, to Mr. Jindal’s principal ally in the State Senate, its president, Joel T. Chaisson. “Any time there’s some abuse, I wish you would let us know, as our leader,” he said to Mr. Chaisson, as other senators chuckled.

The point was not lawbreaking, though, but what has long been permitted under existing loose laws, say reform advocates like Mr. Jindal.

Four stories up, in the skyscraper Capitol built by Huey Long, Mr. Jindal is unconnected to the slow-moving rural Louisiana of Long and those who followed him. At 36, he appears to be a young man in a hurry, acutely conscious of Louisiana’s poor national image, aware of his own rising star among Republicans and analytical about the historic missteps that have led Louisiana to coast on its mineral wealth, straight to the bottom of national rankings in ethics and a host of economic and social indicators.

In an interview in his office, words and prescriptions come shooting out in a rapid-fire nonstop monologue. Inside of a half-hour, Mr. Jindal shoehorned a brief history of Louisiana’s political and economic problems, a historical excursion on the office he was sitting in, an agenda for his remaining four years, an analysis of why the state’s government had failed, a recapitulation of his recent campaign, a paean to his father, an explanation of why he pushed the ethics bills, and other topics.