Leah Chase

Early life

Leah Chase was born to Catholic Creole parents in New Orleans and grew up Madisonville, Louisiana. Chase's father was a caulker at the Jahncke Shipyard and her grandmother was a registered nurse and midwife. Chase was one of 11 children. She was six when the Great Depression struck and later recollected surviving on produce they grew themselves--okra, peas, greens--and clothes made of sacks that had held rice and flour. The children helped cultivate the land, especially on the 20-acre strawberry farm her father's family owned, which Chase describes as forming an integral part of her knowledge of food:

I always say it’s good coming up in a small, rural town because you learn about animals. Kids today don’t know the food they eat. If you come up in a country town, where there’s some farming, some cattle raising, some chicken raising, you know about those things...When we went to pick strawberries we had to walk maybe four or five miles through the woods and you learned what you could eat. You knew you could eat that mayhaw, you could eat muscadines. You knew that, growing up in the woods. You just knew things. You got to appreciate things.

Madisonville, a segregated town, did not have a Catholic high school for black children, so Chase moved to New Orleans to live with relatives and pursue a Catholic education at St. Mary's Academy.

Early career

After high school, Chase held many jobs including managing two amateur boxers and became the first woman to mark the racehorse board for a local bookie. Chase's favorite job was working as a waitress at the Colonial Restaurant in the French Quarter in New Orleans.

Dooky Chase

In 1946, she married musician Edgar "Dooky" Chase II. His parents owned a street corner stand in Treme, founded in 1941, that sold lottery tickets and homemade po-boy sandwiches. Chase began working in the kitchen at the restaurant during the 1950s, and over time, Leah and Dooky took over the stand and converted it into a sit-down establishment. She eventually updated the menu to reflect her own family's Creole recipes as well as recipes--Shrimp Clemenceau--otherwise available only in whites-only establishments from which she and her patrons were barred.

Civil Rights Movement

During the 1960s Dooky Chase became one of the only public places in New Orleans where people of color could meet and discuss strategies during the Civil Rights Movement. Local Civil Rights leaders such as A.P. Tureaud and Ernest "Dutch" Morial, would commonly meet at Dooky Chase for secret discussions. Leah Chase would later house the secret meetings and strategy discussions for Martin Luther King Jr. and the Freedom Riders. They would hold meetings and strategy discussions in her upstairs meeting rooms while she served them gumbo and fried chicken. Leah Chase's restaurant was key when King and the Freedom Riders came to learn from the Baton Rouge Bus Boycott. As King and the Freedom Riders were beginning to organize their bus boycott in Montgomery, they would hold meetings with civil leaders from New Orleans and Baton Rouge in Dooky Chase's meeting rooms to learn about the bus boycotts in Baton Rouge. The plan and organization of the Montgomery bus boycotts were inspired by the boycotts in Baton Rouge. Dooky Chase became so popular that even though local officials knew about these "illegal" meetings, the city or local law enforcement could not stop them or shut the doors of Dooky Chase because of the risk of public backlash.

Dooky Chase became a stable in the black communities of New Orleans. Leah Chase and her husband Edgar "Dooky" Chase would host black voter registration campaign organizers, the NAACP, black political meetings and many other civil leaders at their restaurant. While there were no black-owned banks in African-American communities, people would commonly go to Dooky Chase on Friday's where Leah Chase and her husband would cash checks for trusted patrons at the bar. Friday nights became popular at Dooky Chase where people would cash their checks, have a drink, and order a po-boy.

Art collection

Chase also developed an interest in African-American art and began to display dozens of paintings and sculptures by African-American artists like Jacob Lawrence and Elizabeth Catlett, as well as hired local musicians to play in her bar.

Hurricane Katrina

Dooky Chase's 5th Ward location was flooded by Hurricane Katrina and was not scheduled to reopen until the summer of 2006. To save Chase's African-American art collection from damage, her grandson placed the art collection in storage. The New Orleans restaurant community got together on April 14, 2006 (Holy Thursday) to hold a benefit, charging $75 to $500 per person for a gumbo z'herbes, fried chicken, and bread pudding lunch at a posh French Quarter restaurant. The guests consumed 50 gallons of gumbo and raised $40,000 for the 82-year-old Mrs. Chase. Dooky Chase restaurant was scheduled to open April 5, 2007. It opened mostly for take-out and special events because of a shortage of trained waitstaff.

Reopening and accolades

Since reopening the doors of Dooky Chase, Leah Chase has fed her creole cuisine to many important figures including both presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Later known as the Queen of Creole Cuisine, Leah Chase has won many awards and achievements in her lifetime. She was awarded "Best Fried Chicken in New Orleans" by NOLA.com in 2014. Leah Chase has received the James Beard Lifetime Achievement in 2016 for her lifetime's body of work that has had a positive and the long lasting impact on the way people ate, cooked and thought about food in New Orleans. Many world renowned chefs such as John Besh and Emeril Lagasse has honored Leah Chase and credited her with perfecting creole cuisine. Leah Chase has fed many celebrities, politicians and activist such as Ray Charles, Hank Aaron, Bill Cosby, and many other prominent figures in the African-American community. Charles would sing in his song "Early Morning Blues" about waking up and going to Dooky Chase to get something to eat.

Operating under limited hours since Hurricane Katrina, Dooky Chase has always been busy while open. From Tuesday to Fridays from 11 A.M. to 3 P.M. people would have lines formed outside of the restaurant, sometimes wrapping around the corner. Chase has expressed her concerns about the future of her restaurant since giving control of the business to family. Chase envisions her restaurant as a modern version of what it once was. In a time where she would sell sandwiches and snacks from a walk-up window, the bar would be a social hub in the community again, and her restaurant would be open for lunch and dinner with an extended menu so more people could enjoy her food. According to the family of Chase, the hours of operation and limited menu are to save Leah Chase from "her own work ethic". Chase still works in the kitchen of Dooky Chase throughout all business hours and has been known to work and cook for events honoring her.

In the media

In the 2012 revival of Tennessee Williams's classic New Orleans play A Streetcar Named Desire, which had an all-African-American cast, a mention of the restaurant Galatoire's (which was segregated during the play's post-war 1940s time period) was changed to a mention of Dooky Chase's Restaurant, which was integrated.

In a 2017 episode of the Travel Channel's Man v. Food, host Casey Webb visited Dooky Chase to try their famed "Creole Gumbo".

Chase Family Foundation

In 2013, Chase and her husband Edgar "Dooky" Chase Jr. founded the Edgar "Dooky" Jr. and Leah Chase Family Foundation. According to their official website, The Edgar "Dooky" Jr. and Leah Chase Family Foundation was founded to "cultivate and support historically disenfranichised organizations by making significant contributions to education, creative and culinary arts, and social justice." Having spent her life advocating for civil rights, supporting local artist and musicians, and providing original creole cuisine this foundation is an extension of her passion. Through this foundation the Chase family has hosted several fundraising events to support children's educations such as music, art and history. Their foundation has been sponosored by many local businesses and organizations such as Liberty Bank, Metro Disposal, Popeyes, Entergy New Orleans and many others.

Other projects

Chase hosts a cooking show devoted to Creole cooking, and she is the author of several cookbooks.

Cookbooks by Leah Chase

The Art of Leah Chase

From April 24, 2012 to September 16, 2012, the New Orleans Museum of Art exhibited Leah Chase: Paintings by Gustave Blache III. The exhibition documented chef Leah Chase in the kitchen and the dining room at Dooky Chase Restaurant. Asked whether she thought the rendering was accurate, Chase, 89, said the young artist had gotten it right. "I told him, 'You could have made me look like Halle Berry or Lena Horne, but you made it look like me,'" she said.

Leah Chase in the Smithsonian

Blache's painting, Cutting Squash, from the exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art was acquired for its permanent collection by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in 2011. "We are always looking for portraits of nationally prominent figures,” National Portrait Gallery chief curator Brandon Fortune said. "It is a very interesting image of a woman at work, doing a very simple task, cutting squash...But in some ways it transcends the everyday and becomes something of national significance." Another one of the Smithsonian Institutions, National Museum of African American History and Culture, came calling for another painting of Chase from the Blache series, acquiring Leah Red Coat Stirring (Sketch) in 2013. Leah Chase is the first chef who has two portraits is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution, both the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Leah Chase: Exhibition Catalogue

The catalogue for the exhibition Leah Chase: Paintings by Gustave Blache III was published by Hudson Hills Press in the Fall of 2012.