New Orleans has gotten its beans back.

These are not the creole red beans that hold a sacred place on Monday lunch menus across the city. Rather, they are the measures of restaurant quality that the city’s daily newspaper awards. Let other critics use stars; The Times-Picayune deals in beans.

In its Friday issue, for the first time since every restaurant in the city shut down after Hurricane Katrina nearly three years ago, the newspaper was handing out beans alongside a formal restaurant review.

“The restaurant scene is once again robust enough to withstand critiques,” said Jim Amoss, editor of The Times-Picayune.

By one count, there are 105 more restaurants than before the levees failed.

Given that there is plenty of crime, political scandal and rebuilding news to fill the pages of the paper, one would think that the return of a simple restaurant review might not attract much attention. But this is New Orleans, a city dipped in gumbo and garlic butter whose essential culinary canon has not varied much since the late 1700s.