In the world of restaurants it’s so easy to get caught up in just focusing on food and spending endless time on the craft of the chef. But there are restaurants that have a larger purpose, where they don’t just have great food, but they become gathering places in a community, and eventually a pillar in a city. That is the legacy of the New Orleans restaurant Dooky Chase’s, and its matriarch Leah Chase, who died this past weekend at the age of 96.
The Chase family announced the passing, writing in a statement, “Her daily joy was not simply cooking, but preparing meals to bring people together. One of her most prized contributions was advocating for the Civil Rights Movement through feeding those on the front lines of the struggle for human dignity.”
Known as the queen of Creole cooking, Chase served as the executive chef up until her passing. She started the restaurant with her husband Edgar Dooky Chase in 1941. At a time when New Orleans’ fine dining icons like Galatoires and Antoine’s excluded black diners, they built an inclusive bastion of upscale dining. “In these desegregated times it’s hard to imagine what it meant for Leah Chase to try to create a fancy restaurant for black people,” author and New Orleans native Lolis Eric Elie told The New York Times.
The restaurant became a gathering place for Freedom Riders and the NAACP during the civil rights movement. And over the years, the Chases served activists, politicians and celebrities alike. Thurgood Marshall once called Robert F. Kennedy from the restaurant’s phone line; she appeared in Beyonce’s Lemonade; she once stopped then Senator Barack Obama from committing the culinary sin of adding hot sauce to her gumbo; Ray Charles changed the lyrics to a song to mention Dooky Chase’s; she hosted President George W. Bush two years after Katrina shut down her restaurant; we named it among the 30 most influential restaurants of the last 30 years; and in 2016 she was given the Lifetime Achievement Award from the James Beard Foundation.
At the announcement of her passing leaders in the world of food took to social media to express what Leah Chase meant the world of food, New Orleans and America.
Mashama Bailey, Chef
Jose Andres, Chef
Ruth Reichl, Writer
Tanya Holland, Chef
Wendell Pierce, Actor
Michael Twitty, Award-Winning Food Historian
Alon Shaya, Chef
Padma Lakshmi, Host of Top Chef
LaToya Cantrell, Mayor of New Orleans
Nina Compton, Chef
Edouardo Jordan, Chef
JJ Johnson, Chef
