Eating in New Orleans: Classic Southern comfort food at Dooky Chase's Restaurant
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Eating in New Orleans: Classic Southern comfort food at Dooky
Chase's Restaurant
Julie Miller Aug 26 2016
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Long-standing and respected chef Leah Chase at Dooky Chase's restaurant in New Orleans. Photo: Lonely
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A small crowd has gathered outside a corner restaurant in the New Orleans
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Eating in New Orleans: Classic Southern comfort food at Dooky Chase's Restaurant
neighbourhood of Treme, waiting for its doors to open for lunch service. A
hotel opens in CBD cinema
site
young woman breaks the line to wiggle the handle and peer through a
window, apologising for her impatience as she reclaims her position in the
searing Louisiana midday sun.
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"I'm just so excited, this has been on my bucket list forever," she gushes.
"Seriously, I've watched The Princess and the Frog a million times. I just
hope she's here today, she's my absolute hero!"
SEE ALSO
New Orleans travel guide
The "she" in question is Leah Chase, the beloved 93-year-old executive
chef of Dooky Chase's Restaurant and the undisputed Queen of Creole
Cuisine. Over seven decades, this self-taught cook has fed famous
musicians, community leaders and politicians, written three cookbooks,
made numerous television appearances and won a swag of awards,
including a recent James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award –
the first black chef to be bestowed such an honour.
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This is the woman who famously slapped Barack Obama's hand when the
then future president had the gall to pour hot sauce on her gumbo; and you
may have caught a glimpse of her recently, proud and resplendent on a
high-backed gold throne in Beyonce's Emmy-nominated visual album,
Lemonade, one of a slew of powerful black women who make a cameo
appearance. Yes, Miss Leah, as she is called in the South, is a true New Orleans rock
star – and the inspiration for Disney's first animated black heroine in 2009's
The Princess and the Frog, a tale of a poor young woman with big dreams
of opening her own restaurant. Now celebrating its 75th year, Dooky Chase's is an institution in the New
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Eating in New Orleans: Classic Southern comfort food at Dooky Chase's Restaurant
Orleans culinary scene, lauded as serving the best gumbo and fried chicken
in the city. And while diners are guaranteed a hearty meal punching with
flavour and soul, this humble brick building is so much more than just a
restaurant – it's a meeting place, an art gallery, a cultural hub and a symbol
of freedom and equality. As fellow James Beard alumni John Besh said, it's
"75 years of an evolution – in many ways the cornerstone of an entire
culture".
It was here, during the 1950s and 1960s, that civil rights leaders and
freedom riders such as Martin Luther King jnr, Thurgood Marshall, A.P
Tureaud, the Reverend A.L Davis and Oretha Castle Haley would meet and
strategise over bowls of steaming gumbo and fried chicken; even though it
was illegal for blacks and whites to eat under the same roof, it was a safe
haven in troubled times, and technically the first integrated restaurant in the
country.
Today, it continues to welcome diners from every culture and race, tourists
and locals alike relishing its lunchtime buffets loaded with classic Southern
comfort food – fried chicken, gumbo, andouille​ sausage, red beans and rice,
stuffed shrimp and peach cobbler. And overseeing it all is the queen herself,
a constant presence in the kitchen and showing no signs of abdicating her
throne.
Inside the dining room, its red walls lined with a priceless collection of black
American art, a hush descends over the white-clothed tables as Miss Leah,
dressed in a becoming hot-pink chef's jacket, makes an appearance, her
progression slow and a little unsteady as she balances on a walker.
Immediately, she is swamped with admirers, phone cameras raised in
selfies as she greets them with a smile and a hug, showing all the grace and
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"Ain't you pretty in your raggedy pants!" Leah jokes as a young woman,
dressed in ripped white shorts and dangly earrings asks me to take their
photo. But when I suggest that she may be a role model to young women
like this, Leah scoffs, her brown eyes dancing.
It's difficult to believe that this sweet, humble and endearing lady could raise
her voice in anger – but there's no doubting her fortitude or determination,
qualities that have resulted in her ceiling-smashing rise to prominence to
stand alongside Louisiana's top chefs in a competitive and cutthroat
industry. Her story is as inspirational as any Disney script – raised in rural
Madisonville, Louisiana, as the eldest of 11 children, Leah first broke the
cultural mould at the age of 16 by taking a job as a waitress in the French
Quarter – definitely a "no no" in those days.
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"I ain't a role model," she says, shaking her head. "Role models are nice
people. I'm not nice all the time, I get frustrated and furious. In the kitchen,
I'm always getting into trouble from my daughter when I yell at my staff. She
says, 'You can't call them stupid jackasses!' But they are paid good money
to be yelled at!"
Eating in New Orleans: Classic Southern comfort food at Dooky Chase's Restaurant
"Oh, they thought that was the worst thing I could have done," she tells me.
"That wasn't what a good Creole of colour did – you don't go around the
French Quarter, you don't even go near it, my dear! But I went to work
there, I waited tables – and I loved it."
After meeting and marrying a local big band leader, Edgar "Dooky" Chase
jnr, in 1946, this ambitious young woman took what she learned in "white
restaurants" to her husband's family business – a bar and po-boy sandwich
shop – transforming it into a sit-down restaurant with fancy white tablecloths
and jazz music, serving homestyle Creole cooking with a dash of French
Quarter sophistication. "Black people did not eat out, they cooked at home," Leah says. "They were
great cooks and if they came out to eat, it was to eat a sandwich. So here I
was trying to change things, trying to serve what they served in the French
Quarter, cream sauces and all that, and the coloured people thought I was
crazy! They were not accustomed to that, so I had to back up and start
doing the things that I knew people liked."
But all that started to change as the Civil Rights movement gained
momentum. "When integration came and black people could go to other
restaurants, they wanted what they saw there," Leah recalls. "And they'd
come back and say, 'Leah, you need to fix this, learn to fix that'. That to me
was the worst thing about segregation, you kept people from learning –
people didn't have the opportunity to learn."
Not that a lack of formal opportunities stopped Leah from educating herself.
"I had to wing it. I had to get every book I could get, study every book I
could study, and do it for myself. "In our community, being a cook was nothing. At one time, they didn't want
my daughter to come out in so-called society, because I was 'only a cook',
and I had what they called 'just a bar'. I didn't have any formal education
and black people looked at that as nothing. So I had to overcome all of
that."
Opportunity, when it came her way, was something to be embraced; during
the 1970s, for instance, she was offered a position of the board of the New
Orleans Museum of Art, despite having no background or real knowledge of
the subject matter. "At that time, African-Americans had no place to show their work. So I
started collecting, and putting it on the walls here. I got criticised for that too
by the black community! They didn't understand art at all, we couldn't even
go into museums at that time."
Today, the Dooky and Leah Chase Collection of African American Art,
including works by renowned artists such as Elizabeth Catlett​ and Jacob
Lawrence, is considered by many to be the best in New Orleans. But they
nearly lost it all – and the business – during New Orleans' darkest hour,
Hurricane Katrina, when the restaurant was swamped by 1.5 metres of
murky water. "I lost everything except for the art. I saved it because my grandson was a
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Eating in New Orleans: Classic Southern comfort food at Dooky Chase's Restaurant
fireman at the time. One evening he called me and he said, 'They (the New
York Fire Department) are gonna help me take it off the wall and they're
going to bring it to Baton Rouge. So I was able to save the art but that's all I
saved. The rest just went, the chairs, the food, everything."
It was the community that the Chases had served so loyally for decades that
came to the restaurant's rescue, firstly by protecting it from vandals, then
raising $US40,000 during a benefit lunch serving Leah's famous gumbo
z'herbes. The thought of closing down permanently was never an option for
Leah; and the landmark restaurant finally reopened in April 2007 after a half
million dollar restoration.
Despite Dooky Chase's standing in the New Orleans community, its
irrepressible chef still sees room for improvement. She's hoping to add
Saturday night to their repertoire, and she'd like to re-introduce takeout as a
way of connecting with their neighbours.
"You never forget the people who made you," she says. "You don't forget
people, no matter what problems they have or their lifestyle, you try to be
nice to them. And that's why I want to give back with takeout."
And when the thorny subject of retirement is broached, the grand old dame
of Creole cooking dismisses the thought with an emphatic "no!". "And do what? Just sit down and wait to die?" she laughs. "I can't do that. I
was taught different. There's always something to do. I've got work to do."
TRIP NOTES
MORE INFORMATION
neworleansonline.com
GETTING THERE
United Airlines flies from Sydney and Melbourne to Los Angeles, with
domestic connections to New Orleans; see united.com
STAYING THERE
The Renaissance Pere Marquette is located on the fringe of the French
Quarter, within walking distance of all major sights. Rooms from $US92
($120) a night; see marriott.com.au
EATING THERE
Dooky Chase's Restaurant is open for buffet lunch from Tuesday through
Friday, and for dinner on Fridays. The buffet lunch costs $US19.95, with
mains from $US17.95; see dookychaserestaurant.com
Julie Miller was a guest of Dooky Chase's Restaurant.
Traveller
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Eating in New Orleans: Classic Southern comfort food at Dooky Chase's Restaurant
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Cathy Wagstaff · Founder and Group Editor at Signature Media
great yarn
Like · Reply · Aug 28, 2016 1:59am
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