(01-27) 04:00 PST Oaxaca, Mexico -- The last time I was in Oaxaca, I was frantically trying to improvise a gas mask. The city was a war zone: anti-government protesters packing spray paint, rocks and Molotov cocktails; police in riot gear tossing canisters of black tear gas into the crowd.

My eyes stinging, I raced past the burned-out shell of a bus. Thick smoke filled the air, but there was just enough of a clearing to allow me a glimpse of El Catedral restaurant. It looked so enticing: a serene courtyard, white tablecloths and glass wine goblets with the distinctive Mexican blue rim. But the door was locked.

I kept running.

Fast-forward one year and I'm finally inside El Catedral, and in a city that feels much different.

Seated under the stars on an ancient stone patio, a fountain burbling beside me, I savor sauteed mushrooms in garlic wine sauce. The setting is almost exactly as I envisioned it would be: a place of architectural jewels, one-of-a-kind textiles and culinary surprises.

Except I am alone.

The two-story bar, all polished wood and chrome, is dark. The dining room to the right of the courtyard is as empty as the one to the left.

I have returned to Oaxaca on assignment: To find out if, one year after deadly riots crippled the city, it is again an attractive destination for visitors seeking language schools, colonial history, craft markets and art galleries.

I'm eager - and a bit apprehensive - to check in on friends I'd made here and find out whether Oaxaca still belongs on Mexico's A-list. It didn't take long to realize that the answer is more complicated than I'd thought.

Oaxaca is no longer the filthy, smoldering wreck of 2006. Nor, however, is it the bustling cultural center of years past. It appears safe and clean. But unresolved political tensions have prompted the U.S. State Department to keep it on a watch list. "We're not discouraging tourism," says U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Judith Bryan. "But we want informed and appropriately cautious tourism."

My friend Harry Smith, a Bostonian living in Oaxaca with his wife and three daughters, is keenly aware of the economic and political injustices in the city. But he also wants Americans to appreciate its warmth and beauty.

"I would advise people to come, as long as they come with their eyes open," he says. "But this is not Disneyland."

As in most of Oaxaca, things at El Catedral, where I've come for dinner, are mas o menos, explains my waiter, Alberto. Translated literally, the phrase means "more or less." But Alberto's diplomatic shorthand, which I will hear often during a three-day visit, hints at the conflicted, contradictory state of an emotionally scarred city.

For adventurous travelers, mas o menos can also translate to opportunity. The decline in foreign visitors - from 264,000 in 2005 to 190,000 this past year through October - means there are bargains to be had, and no hordes to fight. Smith, for instance, negotiated half-price rates at the nearby beaches of Puerto Escondido.

As I finish an affordable glass of Spanish Tempranillo, two groups arrive at El Catedral, adding a bit of life to the courtyard.

"It's certainly not like it was three years ago," declares Virginia O'Brien, a San Diegan who has returned to the city every year since her first Spanish-language class in 1984. "This place would be packed; we'd be lucky to get a table."

Now in her 70s, with cropped red hair and kitschy-cool Mexican-silver skeletons dangling from her ears, O'Brien loves Oaxaca so much she even came during the riots. She and a travel agent friend "were going to bring a tour last year, but we canceled it, thank God," she says. This year's group backed out.

"People are taking their kids back to school; they're walking in the Zócalo (town square) again," says her dining companion, Javier Garcia Vigil, who is the director of the Symphony of Oaxaca.

O'Brien, who loves to scout for bargain-price hand-woven rugs, remains bullish on Oaxaca. But she is sad: "It hasn't staged a real comeback yet."

The new normal