Chef Leah Chase

There’s a New Orleans woman who has been immortalized in a Ray Charles song, a Disney film, and a 2012 revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. Along the way she also picked up the title of “Queen of Creole Cuisine.” But Chef Leah Chase is more than the art works that have used her name and likeness. She’s flesh and bone and sitting right across from me at Dooky Chase, the establishment erected in 1940 by her in-laws and transformed by young Leah into a full-fledged restaurant. At ninety-three, Chase still comes in each day the restaurant’s open: to cook and chat and to continue shaping her empire. On this day, Chase sat at my table to talk about her legacy, her relationship to New Orleans, and how that young man at the table next to us better take his hat off.

As he obeyed, she winked to the whole room at once. “There you go! And don’t leave it. I might take it. I like it.” 

Find excerpts from our conversation below. 

On her arrival at Dooky Chase:

When I came in 1946, my mother-in-law was living here—in this room here. That’s how people did it in those days. They either lived upstairs or they lived what they called “half-house” with the restaurant. So she had her little bar and her little sandwich shop, and she lived on this side. 

You see, when she started, black people didn’t eat at restaurants. They ate at home. You couldn’t get them to come sit down to a table and eat dinner. If they entertained company, it was at home. But they would go out Friday nights for entertainment. They would go out to have a drink; and naturally to accompany the drink, they’d want a sandwich or something. So that’s how she started. She would serve shrimp sandwiches, oyster sandwiches, things like that. 

I came in about 1946. In 1940, I was working as a waitress in the French Quarter. So I knew what restaurants looked like. The average black person did not because we couldn’t go in them. So how would we know what they looked like? 

I came in here and started setting up the tables and doing all that kind of thing like I saw on the other side of town. That was hard to do. That was hard. Because—not being able to go in restaurants, you didn’t realize that things had to be sterilized. You didn’t think about that! So your mother would say, “You don’t wanna eat there because the glasses, everybody’s drinkin’ out the same glasses.” What do you know? You didn’t know they went through a process of sterilizing everything. You didn’t know. 

On the civil rights movement: 

In this restaurant, for some reason, white people always came even though it was illegal. But they would come to meet people if they were running some office and they wanted black people to help them. They would have to meet here, and naturally you’re not going to meet without eating, so they would sit down and have lunch and talk to the people here. 

I fed the Freedom Riders before they would go out. They would come here and they would plan their meetings. Oh, they had a bowl of gumbo and some fried chicken. That’s what they would eat. Then they would plan what they were gonna do and they would go out. Some would go to jail. Some would not come back. They went through a lot, a whole lot. And when they went to jail in New Orleans, I would send food to jail. They didn’t eat jail food—I’d send food to jail. My job was always to feed people. If you can feed people, they can work better, it makes them happy, they’re relaxed, and all that kind of stuff. 

On being Creole:

If you go to Commander’s Palace, for instance, they say “Well, I’m Creole” and they are. Their ancestors are French and Spanish. So they have that influence. When you come here, I might say, “I’m Creole.” Mine may have some French, some Spanish, who knows. But a whole lot of African. So you see, it’s just a mixture of people. But the Creoles in New Orleans, I thought, led similar lives. The white Creoles and the black Creoles. For one thing, they were most all Catholic. 

They didn’t want to be Americanized. They wanted to stick to whatever they were. It’s hard to get people in New Orleans to change. If you live here any length of time, you will understand. It is so hard. They don’t accept change readily, in a hurry. It takes time for them to accept change. They like whatever they like. 

On the foods she likes to eat: 

I might want to go to an Indian restaurant. I might wanna go see what Alon Shaya’s doing. I like to see what he’s serving in his restaurant. That’s how you learn. You keep up. You learn to eat it. That’s what’s good about all the ethnic restaurants in New Orleans. 

You say, “Oh, this is what they do. Let me take it and do something else with it. Let me combine it with something else.” Like I love a good tamale, because they’re spicy and hot. And I found a source where they had nice little ones. Now I said, “I wanna go on my menu with them. But how?” So then I said, “Well, maybe if I take the fried tomato and put that on the side of this tamale.” There you go. You’re mixing it up, and it might be a little bit better.

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On food stereotypes:

I just started serving greens every day, because we did not eat greens every day. We ate greens maybe when they were in season. Once a week, maybe. But people thought because you’re black, you oughta have greens. 

I got criticized for that one time. I’ll never forget. [A tour guide] sent some people here. The people went back, and one lady said she didn’t like it. So he couldn’t understand: Well, why didn’t you like it? So she said, “She’s trying to be what she isn’t.” He asked her to explain. It’s because I didn’t have collard greens or cornbread. I was black and I should have collard greens and cornbread. 

On coming to the restaurant every day:

I’m a people person. I can’t live without people. I could not live and sit in my house all day and not see people. So when I come in, I see people. And they come in and they talk to me. I get to talk to different people every day. So that gives you a little shot to keep going. 

Food is so important. Because if I know what you like to eat, if I know about your food tastes, I know a lot about you. I can learn about people through their food. What do they eat? How do they prepare it? And I learn about you.

On food in her childhood:

You know the funny thing about it? What you came up eating so poor are very elegant things today. Like quail. We had strawberry fields. That’s what my daddy did. He farmed strawberries, and he had about fifteen acres of strawberries. You have to pick that. And the white quails would come down in those fields sometimes, and that’s where you’d shoot them—out in your berry field. And then you could take them home and cook them. My mother used to just braise them. Just put ‘em in the frying pan and braise them with a bit of butter. Because we were poor, we had WPA. But WPA, the federal government gave you good butter. They didn’t give you any margarine or anything. It was good butter. So I learned to eat good butter.  

And we had plum trees in our backyard. I’ll never forget—they gave the most beautiful shade. Just right across the backyard. So you see, we came up with plum jelly, blackberry jam. Comin’ up in a small town—what you call an old country town—you know what you can pick, you know what you can touch, you know what you can eat, you know what you can’t eat. So you come up with things, and today you find out they’re delicacies. 

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On the place of women:

Women have to learn they’re powerful. They don’t understand today how powerful they are. You know, that just came natural to me because I came up in a small town. I came up in the country. My daddy didn’t let us plow the fields, but we certainly had to get out there and help plan and help do things. We had to cart in the wood. My daddy always told us you can do whatever you want to do. You can be whatever you want to be. You just have to work. That’s the whole thing. You just have to work.

My God, I have a grandson. He’s in Atlanta. He has about forty Popeye’s stores. A lot of stores, doing well. I had to talk to him about ladies one time. He said, you know, Grandmother, women should really know their place. They should love their place. And they should stay in it. And I said okay, I’ll agree with you there. But what you don’t understand is our place? It’s all over the place.