Funding for Leah Chase: The Queen of Creole Cuisine is made possible by the Whitney Institute, The Rhodes Family Businesses, the Dillard University Ray Charles Program and African American Material Culture, the Nelly Murray Feast Committee, Liberty Bank, McAlaney Company, Entergy Corporation, Richard and Linda Freedman, Harris New Orleans City Council Community Support Grant, Talbot Realty Group, New Orleans Auction, Susan and Fayez Sarofim, Patrick F. Taylor Foundation, International House, Metro Service Group, Richard's Disposal, Friends of Leah Chase, Chef Susan Spicer, and city where good food and great hospitality aren't hard to find, there are those places that manage to stand out in the crowd of excellence.Dooky Chase's is one of those places.

Mostly because of the feisty chef who has been making it all happen here for the last 70 years, Leah Chase.You will still find her in the kitchen cooking gumbo, making root, telling everybody what to do.

The gift of Leah Chase to the world is every person who thinks black, white, Asian, it doesn't matter, when you think you cannot do it, all you have to do is look at her life story and say you know what?

If she can do it, I can do it.

She's happy to tell you that.

That's Leah Chase to me.

Leah's gift to all of us is the art hanging in Dooky Chase restaurant.Art by African American artists of international, national and local fame.

People go there for Leah's food.It's great and that's why they go there.You go there and ask for stuffed eggplant, my God, it will be fantastic.Everybody [inaudible 00:02:33] stuff eggplant.You look at the menu, you don't know what you're going to order.

No city in America has anybody comparable to Leah Chase.She is uniquely New Orleans.She is uniquely.She belongs to us and to the traditions and to the spirit of the place.She epitomizes the depth and the meaning and the importance of the city.

I'm Michelle Miller outside of Dooky Chase Restaurant where the Queen of Creole Cuisine creates dishes for her customers that give them just a little bit of her soul.Her starts north of New Orleans, across Lake Pontchartrain in the small town of Madisonville, Louisiana.Born on January 6th, 1923, the first official day of the year's Mardi Gras season.

I came from a family that was really family-oriented.We had a lot of children.My mother had raised 11 of us.

Nine girls, two boys, and somehow they all fit in this shotgun house in the country.One of her sisters, Sylvia, still lives there.Her parents, Charles and Hortencia Lang were strong Catholics.They believed in God and hard work.

They grew vegetables and fruit trees, raised pigs, chickens and turnkeys and had a 20 acre strawberry field to help with the family income.

So you had to walk three miles or four miles to pick those strawberries.After you bend your back picking them all day, you had to walk back.When you walked back maybe you had a tub of clothes there waiting for you to wash.

Her father worked in the shipyards nearby and in the fields.His WPA job paid 50 cents a day, so everyone had to pitch in if they were all going to eat.

I remember one time Mother had a couple of turkeys, you remember that?

Lord, yes.Do I remember that turkey?

Oh, she was proud of her turkeys.

Another thing she was proud of her guinea hens.

That was the worst thing that ever put in the yard.

They were noisy, noisy, noisy, but they were good to eat.

They'd catch quail in the strawberry fields.

Her mom would turn that into a sweet and savory meal of quail, grits and plumb sauce.A dinner Leah would one day serve to a President of the Unites States.

I think part of what the world is missing today is the dinner table in a big, big way.Meager food turned into masterpieces as far as we were concerned in our cast iron pot.It was at that table that we said grace, as Leah's table said grace.It was at that table that no matter how humble the food, it was served on the best platter you had.

They taught us to sit down with the tablecloth.I remember the tablecloth, during the week we had oilcloth, but on Sunday we had a starched and ironed tablecloth.Of course it might have been made out of flour sacks that you washed and bleached and starched and embroidered, but you had a nice tablecloth.

On Sundays after church they'd stay in town to watch the boats come in.Fishing boats or better yet, ferries full of people, some of them visitors from New Orleans.It was whites only on the top decks.Everyone else had to stay below.No one in her family ever said anything.

That's just the way it was.Her father especially never spoke out.

He was never going to rock the boat, never, not him.

I'll never forget he punished me one time because Miss Shadly, you had to register your newborn babies with her, and I know I'm going to be so modern and so big I'm going to fill out the papers.So I said, "And I'm not going to be colored.I'm not going to be colored.Negro.I'm going to put on it."

My daddy said, "No."

My daddy gave me a good whipping.

"Take that off of there and put colored on there."

See, he was so passive he wasn't going to aggravate anybody, not him.

When Leah was ready for high school at the age of 13 there were no high schools nearby for African American children, so her parents put her on the lower deck of the ferry to New Orleans to live with an aunt.

She would go to St.Mary's Academy in the French Quarter, a Catholic school run by an order of black nuns.Her parents scraped to come up with her tuition of $10 a month.

It was bad in those days to be poor.It was to me worse than segregation because it wasn't like the poor today.

They give people things and they try to help you.Back in those days you were poor and that's it.You were not even noticed.

She graduated in three years and came home to work at a local boarding school.When she was 18 her father let her return to New Orleans where she was expected to go to work in a sewing factory just like her mom and her aunts and some of her sisters.

Instead of work the sewing factories, I went to work in the French Quarter as a waitress.Now that was a big no no, but I could not see myself sitting down shooting out pants pockets all day long or sewing flaps or doing whatever, because that's what factories are, all piecework.

You make pants pockets, you set pants pockets, you make lapels, you set the lapels and whatever.I didn't do that, so my mind was always somewhere else.

So she found a job at the colonial restaurant on Charters in the French Quarter.

It was her first time inside a restaurant.

I would work and ask the chef all kinds of things and they would get angry with me because chefs get angry at you when you're butting in their business, but anyway, that's what I did.I worked there until the woman opened the Coffee Pot.Then I helped her open the Coffee Pot.

Our first dish in New Orleans in a commercial restaurant was wiener jambalaya.She was so excited because her pot of wiener jambalaya sold out in about five minutes.The woman who owned the restaurant said, "You do that again tomorrow."

She learned, she practiced and even picked up a few other jobs to earn money.She marked the race horse board for a local bookie and even managed two amateur boxers at the Coliseum Arena in town, but it was the restaurant business that called her.

drink.Black at Quarters and I'll never forget I used to pass by a restaurant all the time, I loved the chairs.It didn't bother me that I couldn't go in that restaurant, it's just those chairs that fascinated me.I always wanted this restaurant so bad.After I worked in the French Quarter I said, "I want this.I would like one like this.If I ever get somewhere I'd like I a Chase, Junior was playing in a band, his own band.The young man had been on the road since he was 16 playing trumpet and leading the band.Playing a gig in New Orleans one night in 1946 he saw Leah in the audience.

My band was playing for a carnival ball at the Labor Union Hall in New Orleans and I saw a pretty lady in the audience.I told one of my men in the band to come take over the band for me.

I was going to dance with that pretty person I saw over there, you know?

I was good looking, had a nice shape, blah, blah, blah, blah, so he wanted to meet me, so I got to meet him.That was too funny.

Another thing my uncle used to say, musicians were lazy people, musicians were this, musicians were ...Musicians were not looked on as great people.I rather sports people and I love people with physical and emotional strength.They always fascinated me.

While not her type, they hit it off right away.

By the time I met him I was what, 22-years-old.Would you believe he was only 18, so it just went from there.We went everywhere together.

It was a fast romance.Within three months they were married and within a few years they had a growing family.They would have four children, three girls and one boy.It just so happened that Dooky's parents owned a little tavern, a bar really in the other half of their shotgun double in the historic Treme neighborhood of New Orleans.They served drinks and an occasional sandwich.His mom Emily mostly ran the place.

Edgar Dooky, Senior liked that it was successful.

He dressed up in his diamond ring and his diamond stickpin and his diamond watch and he just looked good.She liked to look at him look good, so that worked well.

Soon as the children grew a bit older, Leah volunteered to help out at the restaurant and she had some ideas of her own to change the place, starting with the menu.

I said, "No, we've got to change this."

The one thing, we're going to change this menu.I'm going to put lobster thermidor on the menu.God, these black folks don't know nothing about lobster thermidor.We're going to put shrimp cocktail on.

Nobody knew what a shrimp cocktail was.They thought it was something to worked in there knew.We couldn't go in there and see what went on.So said, "Oh, she's going to ruin your business.She's just going to run you out of business," this, that and the other.They started putting that on and it worked.

So it became her version of Creole cooking, a mix of Spanish, French and African.She also wanted to make it a really nice African.French and Spanish, French and African.She also wanted to make it a really nice restaurant with tablecloths and chairs she'd seen and loved from the restaurants in the Quarter.

But my mother-in-law was, the thing that got her most, not so much the changing of the menu, is the decor.She couldn't see eye to eye with me on the decor.She liked pink and blue.I hate pink and blue.

I thought pink and blue looked like a baby cradle or something, but she liked pink and blue.I said, "Uh uh (negative).We changing this dining room.We're putting red in here."

So I put red on the wall.

Walls became red and gold, brighter colors for an expanded space.The entire double was now a restaurant and she finally got those chairs, just like the ones in the French Quarter restaurants.

So that's the first thing I wanted was to find me a chair like that, so it took some doing with my mother-in-law, because she wanted her steel legged chairs with the plastic covers.No, I want this chair.I've had these chairs since 1957 and I'm pretty proud of them.

She was molding her dream and she wanted to share it.

So when I look at Leah's gift to the world, it's that message that no matter where you come from, no matter what the poverty you experience in your life, the social aspect that was never shown to you, the ability to even walk in a restaurant was not for you, but yet, to push all of that out of the way, all of that fog to clear the room and say you know what?

Here I am.It's all up to me.

Nobody's going to give me anything.

Dooky Chase's was becoming the place to go, the only place at first.She had taken a tavern and turned it into a tablecloth dining experience.

Blacks had nowhere else to go to any restaurant of any real quality and really outstanding aesthetic than at Dooky's.

Leah poured everything she had into the restaurant.Her husband Dooky took care of the money, she took care of everything else.

She was a natural.

Dooky was always behind the bar at the cash register, but she was all over the place because when you went there she just didn't cook.She cooked, but then she came out and if you wanted her to be a part of it, she would.

If you invited her to talk, she would, but she wanted you to know that you were welcome.

Of course it was the only place the black celebrities could eat.Whether you were talking about King Cole or whether you were talking about Duke Ellington and Sarah Vaughn, anybody who was anything in the music world came to Dooky's when they came to New Orleans.

Many of those famous faces grace the walls and her memory.

Anything you cook it brings back memories.

Everybody who came through my restaurant, Lena Horn who liked her fried chicken, Sarah Vaughn who liked her stuffed crabs and Quincy Jones and all those people who loved gumbo, Michael Jackson with his sweet potato pies, you think about them every time you cook.The thing was when Nat Cole came, he asked for his eggs so Dooky called me all excited I was still at home.

He said, "Nat Cole is here and he wants fermented eggs.Fermented eggs.

Do you know what that is?"

I said, "No, but I'm coming down there now."

You had to know how Nat spoke kind of through his nose like, and he wanted a four minute egg, so I had to give him his four minute egg.

Celebrities loved her, but who really helped make this    3 what it is.It's those who spent time here, made memories here.

Some of the brothers who had more than one girlfriend couldn't go anywhere else.They tried.The worst places you could go and try to hide from your number one lady would be Dooky Chase, right?

So incidents like that, what were you thinking?

Whether it was just a night out or a prom date, anniversary, whatever special or regular dinner out, the reputation of Dooky Chase's was spreading beyond its walls, beyond the neighborhood, beyond the city.

Ray Charles had these famous lyrics about going to Dooky Chase, trying to get something to eat, the waitress looks at me and says, "Ray, you sure look beat."

That was a blues song called Early in the Morning, which was very, very popular not only in New Orleans but all over the country.So the mention that he made of Dooky's just made While food certainly played 3 its part in her story, there were other roles Leah and Dooky Chase played in history.

You know, in this restaurant in some ways we really changed the course of America when you think about it because we had all the Civil Rights people planning things here and then they would go out and come back.I say we changed the course of America over a bowl of gumbo.

Early on eating a bowl of Leah's gumbo or anything she cooked was only available to those of her own race.The Louisiana legislature had made it against the law for whites and blacks to eat or drink or gather in the same building.No mixing of color or culture.Voices calling for civil rights were getting louder.Sit-ins and school desegregation issues played out on streets and on the TV.

There were shouts, there were whispers and on this corner in Treme at Dooky Chase's Restaurant there were civil conversations over dinner.

When the Civil Rights Movement came along the Chase family, and Leah especially, had the courage to allow us to have meetings between blacks and whites during the '60s, during the era.So blacks and whites could meet there and eat there, which was illegal.

The Freedom Riders who rode interstate buses into and through the South challenging segregation would find their way to Dooky Chase's.Civil activists, black and white, would gather here in secret and safety.Actually Leah and Dooky didn't set out to be Freedom Fighters.They were hoping for easy peaceful change.They didn't want to lose what they'd built here, but they weren't about to turn away those who were pushing forward, pushing boundaries.

She was ground zero.People could go there all hours of the night.There used to be a long narrow room sort of upstairs and that's where a lot of those civil rights meetings were held because it didn't interfere with the business downstairs.They were talking high level strategy, you know and felt very welcome.

History was made at Dooky Chase in that upper room.

Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley, AP Turro, my husband, Jack Greenberg and a number of other legal giants strategized right there at Dooky Chase.

I think she provided an environment of security.I remember asking her once, "If I bring some of these white kids in here and so forth and so on, what if the police come?"

She said, "The police will not come in here.They're not coming in my restaurant.You don't have to worry about that."

They never flinched, you know?

The cops were never coming in.They'd be outside, but they never bothered us, blacks or whites.

You had policemen that was over this district and they got to know you, so they protected you.They would come in and my mother-in-law would fix them a sandwich, treat them to a sandwich.Now you can't do that, that's illegal.

They'll think you're bribe, but she didn't do that as a bribe.She was just grateful for their help wherever she could get it, whatever they did, you know?

Or the protection that the neighborhood had.

We felt free that in this little zone freedom we could plan and do everything without fear of getting arrested at Dooky's.

That don't mean when we left that we back to normal racists America, but while we were in there nobody felt any intimidation whatsoever.

Just one time they had a pipe bomb, somebody passed through the car and threw a pipe bomb, and that went through the door, through the bar, but nobody was hurt by that.Yeah, patched the wall up and keep going.

What the heck, you just do that.

They all just kept on going.Those strategy meetings held here while against the law did help change the laws.

Being able to work together even in secret made a difference, and while segregation and racism were real and rampant, New Orleans did not have the level of bloodshed and destruction seen in other southern cities.

But the reason it went easier in New Orleans, because in New Orleans, different than other cities, we lived together.Just look at this area.We had Miss [inaudible 00:24:26] live over her grocery there.She was Italian.We had white people living in the next block.We had black people living here, white people living there.So you see, we knew one another.

We lived together so we knew one another.We didn't go into your house, we didn't socialize with you, but you knew me and I knew you.So that made it a little bit easier than it did in Mississippi.

While the struggle for equal rights was still painfully slow, a lot more people now knew about Dooky Chase's, the place and the taste.

I some very dear friends of mine during the civil rights problems, they were using Leah's place to meet.Some of my friends said to me, "You know, this is got to be some of the best food ever put in my mouth."

Many went back and Leah's reputation for both cooking and caring grew.

Even white people revered her so much.They saw her humanity and her ...She didn't care about racial differences and so on.

She behaved the same way toward everybody.I think anybody who ever encountered her had to be impressed.

Leah Chase began to get involved in more and more causes and campaigns.She helped Ebony Magazine put on its first fashion fair.The hugely popular event would eventually go nationwide, but its debut raised money for the Flint Goodrich Hospital, at the time the only private hospital in New Orleans that granted staff privileges to African American surgeons.Leah was one of the first to financially support her friend Ernest Dutch Morial in his successful 1977 political campaign.He became the first African American Mayor of New Orleans.Leah and Dooky would later join him in another campaign, one that would bring the world to Louisiana.

My husband was mayor when there was an effort to get the World's Fair to come here and he took a cadre of people from all professions to France.He took Leah and Dooky Chase with him and they made a grand presentation.So they were an important cog in that wheel to bring the World's Fair here to New Orleans.

Her generosity didn't stop at fairs and fashion shows.She always seemed ready to step up, to help out wherever she was needed.

This city was at one time predominantly Catholic.We didn't work on November 1st because that was All Saint's Day.We went to the cemetery on that day and nobody worked.No schools opened, no nothing.You spent the day in the cemetery.

You wore your good dress in the cemetery, you had food, you put flowers on the tombs.

Just like the savory aromas coming from her kitchen and the sounds of her family voices, faith has always been a familiar part of Leah's life.

You know, all of these children you see, my mother had 11 of us, we all pray every day.We all go to church because that's the way we came up.I told you, my daddy told us all you need to do in life is three things.You need to pray, you need to work, and do for others in that order.

There was no mystery to it.You followed the Ten Commandments, as simple as that.You shared the little bit you have with whoever needs it.You don't complain about what you don't have and then you grow up, you never forget your family, and you go out and represent your family to the world in the best way you can.

How many orders do your hands in there?

Food seemed to be Leah's best way.For her it's always been entwined with family and faith.

Had one priest come through here, he said, "Leah, do you know that's where the Po' Boy come from.Jesus and the fish and the loaves."

I said, "Okay Father, I'll take that too."

But you know, it tells you that that's how you get with people.You feed them, you make them happy.You can talk over a lot of things over some food.

One of her most talked about specials only appears one day a year, on Holy Thursday, the day before Good Friday.Actually, the only entrees on the menu that day, fried chicken and a special gumbo made with an odd number of greens.She uses nine.It's a longstanding Lent tradition that goes way back.Leah believes you make a new friend for every green in the pot.

They made this gumbo zaire, we have veal stew in it, two kinds of sausage, chicken, ham, everything.On Holy Thursday you didn't get really anything to eat until Lent was over and that was at noon on Saturday back in those days.

Over the years her faith has led her to do good works with her food and her money, but to her it's more than a responsibility.It's a way of life.

Your job is what feeds your faith and buys your clothes, but your work, your work on earth is to do God's will, is to help somebody else up, is to better the world you live in.

Her success allowed her to help different causes and issues, support fundraisers.She still cooks and gives away food for special events using her name and her talents to lend a hand.

Oh, what the heck, you know?

You give away some it will come back.I never planned on getting rich.I never planned on having a lot of things for myself, so it didn't bother me that ...I felt good if I was giving something.

Those who know her or know of her see that side of Leah Chase.The matter of fact determined woman who often finds ways to help without all of the fanfare.

The Bible says you will know a tree by its fruit.The fruit of Leah Chase is love, compassion, mercy.Now, she's tough.She believes in personal responsibility.She believes in hard work.She wants you to get up early, she wants you to stay late, but she also believes in the communion of human beings.

When tragedy struck in 1990 it was faith and work that kept Leah Chase going.The sudden death of her oldest daughter Emily who had worked side by side with her in the kitchen broke her heart.

I remember when my daughter died.That was the hardest thing in the world.She went home, she worked here and she went home at 5:00 and I knew she was in trouble.She was pregnant, couldn't deliver that baby, something was wrong.

I don't know why.One o'clock that morning she was dead.Just died.That was a hard blow, but I had to get up that next morning and open this restaurant.You could cry, you could stay home, you could ...

Nothing is going to bring that person back.But what people don't understand is when you tough or they think you tough like that, they look at you as if you don't have any feelings at all.They don't understand the tough and the strong have the same feelings as the weak.

You have the same hurt, you just don't show it.

Her strength and determination often show up with a smile.

It's how she greets her guests, her friends, even strangers.

If I could just make a difference, that would be only thing.If you live a life and you look back and you say, "Well, I did make a difference.I did something that bettered the world or uplifted somebody."

That's all you do.

She has a lot of words of wisdom and she isn't shy about sharing.Some she's learned along the way, some she's carried all her life.

She said, "You know Rudy, my mother told me if you want to succeed in a man's world, she said you've got to think like a man, dress like a girl, act like a woman and work like a slave."

I'm paraphrasing.I don't remember exact.

It was something like that and to that recipe Leah Chase added passion, for faith, for family and her food.Somewhere along the way a friend introduced her to the art world.In the mid-70s, Leah Chase started to see things in a different way, through the eyes of artists.

Urged by her good friend Celestine Cooke, Miss Chase took a board position here at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

This began an awakening in her midlife.

I had a good friend that was in, she was on the museum board.She was the only African American on that board, so when she got off the board she said, "I'm going to put your name up."

I said, "Don't do that because I do not know anything about it."

She said, "But you will learn."

With a lot of help and advice, Leah took her own small step into the art world.

She bought a poster.It was from a collection done by the famous African American artist Jacob Lawrence.

From then on she was educating herself in African American artwork that she could collect, so I think she started collecting Elizabeth Catlett's work.She also bought something from one of the local star artists at the time, Richard Thomas that hangs in the restaurant.I think from then on like most art collectors who start collecting, that bug started to gnaw at her and one turned into two turned into 30 works or so of art that hang within the confines of the restaurant.

The gift she has given to all of us is an art gallery, a museum.Someone who would never put foot in a museum can come into Dooky Chase, order a Po' Boy and be in the midst of all of this wonderful art by African American artists.That's a gift that nobody else has replicated.

At the time, nobody showed African American artwork in galleries.They didn't have that so if I put it on my wall people will put it on my have that so if I put it on my wall people will see it and well, first people thought I was crazy.They said, "This is a restaurant, it's not a museum.Blah, blah, blah, blah."

I said, "But it's mine," so I just went out favorites the stained glass     3 serves as a divider between a serving hallway and the dining room.

I told him I wanted to put the stained glass there.My husband, "Oh, I like stained glass," but Dooky thought I was going to put church windows.

Instead, she commissioned the panels to capture her own memories.

This was the double.One side was this, so my neighbor could be in her blinds and I could be in mine.We could talk when nobody would see us.So I remember they used to play that game Rock Teacher.You would sit on the bottom step and then you'd have your hands crossed.The rock would be ...

So to guess what hand the rock was in and if you guessed it you went up a step.But I like what he did there because there are mixtures of color in our community, so look here, different color hands.

She felt it only right to help the artists who were giving so much to the world through their painting bu buying their work, encouraging their success, even cooking up some supplies.

I'm proud of my hamstrings because I have a friend that's an artist and he's doing a piece of art with bones, so I save him all the bones so my bones will be saved.They will go into a work of art.Artists are weird.Good people, but weird.

A quality that over the years she's enjoyed and appreciated and championed.In 1995 Leah was called to testify before the US House of Appropriations Subcommittee where she defended funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.Artist Gustav Blache began a project in 2009 that would capture Leah Chase in her favorite place, the kitchen.Twenty paintings, one of them now hangs in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.It's titled Cutting Squash.

It's almost as though she's Senator and we're sending her to Washington in some form or fashion, but to have her represent us in the National Portrait Gallery where presidents' portraits are, she's our representative and I can't think of a greater honor to at least play somewhat of a role in this Many other honors and awards have Leah's name engraved on them in recognition of her culinary skills and also for her contribution to culture and community.

Oh my goodness.

Oh my goodness.Oh my goodness, isn't this wonderful?

If you'd name an award in American food, there's thousands of them, but I can guarantee you between the biggest ones that everybody recognize, all the Hall of Fame awards, National Restaurant Hall of Fame, the Culinary Review, The James Beard Foundation, the Southern Food and Beverage, I mean you name it, for me to start naming Leah Chase's awards, it would take me for an hour and a half because she's got them Hi there and welcome to Creole Cooking with Leah Chase.

Leah's popularity led her to step out of her kitchen and into a TV studio kitchen where she showed her regional audience just how she made that flavor come alive.

It's better than my wood stove was when I was coming up.On the wood stove you had to really work.This way you can just kick it up a little bit, see?

But it was her friendship with Louisiana chef John Folse that helped introduce Leah to the rest of the world.

I want to bring out the Queen of Creole Cooking, Leah Chase.Leah, where are you?

Come on out here, sweetheart.

He had her on his own TV cooking show a few times, but when the two of them hit the road together, they conquered the country with Cajun and Creole cuisine.

I had an opportunity, an event in Philadelphia and I called Leah and I said, "Leah, they want me to come up and do Cajun and Creole, a presentation in Philadelphia.

Would you come and do the Creole, the African, the Creole side and I'll do Cajun and let's see what happens?"

She said, "Absolutely."

I'll stage of about 1,000 people in this massive auditorium, biggest crowd I ever saw, and I walked up on the stage and I said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Chef John Folse and here's my wife, Leah Chase."

Leah looked at me.She said, "The And the crowd went wild.We      3 realized we had a show.We realized we had just created The John Folse, Leah Chase Cajun Creole Experience.

One time I was his mamma.I said, "John, don't tell people I'm your mama.Look, your daddy, your daddy's going to say, 'What's happening?

Where was [inaudible 00:41:52].'

Don't tell people that."

Sometimes I'd be his wife.I'd say, "John, you going to get in trouble here."

Even those who couldn't get to New Orleans in person would get to know Leah Chase.

Because it's more than just food and it's more than just celebrity.It's culture.

It's ongoing and it's We're very lucky to have that.

A part of her world now resides in another section of the Smithsonian.Her red chef's jacket is on permanent display inside the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

I love food and I love to eat it, I love to serve it and it makes people happy.

For most of her life this has been her life.She thinks better and feels better here and so when she lost this precious space it almost 2005 Hurricane Katrina swept through the New Orleans area washing away lives and levies.

The devastation hit every single person, if not physically, certainly emotionally.Those who left, evacuated, had no idea what they would find and what Katrina left behind.

When I got to Birmingham and began to see what was happening, it didn't soak in at first.My grandson was here.He was a fireman and I kept telling him, "I'm coming home.I'm coming to do this."

He said, "I'm telling you Grandmother, you cannot come."

Her home, her family's homes, her beloved restaurant all ruined.

There were frogs all over the place.It was everything.It was just, and then you come back and there are all these flies that have gone.It was the worst thing in the world.The worst thing in the world you can ever see.You don't know what to do or where to start.

She remembers going to a grocery store in Baton Rouge and seeing a Crown Roast.She started to cry.

The lady say, "Well, don't worry Miss Chase.

It's coming.You're going to soon have some," but I felt like an idiot just standing up there crying in the store because I had no place to cook.

But I looked for Leah for weeks after Katrina, miserable that I couldn't find her.Then finally somebody called me and said, "john, she's in Baton Rouge."

I'll never forget Dooky was on the front porch and I said, "Dooky, where's Leah?"

I went in and I looked at Leah and the first words out of her mouth, she said, "John, I'm finished.I'm done.

John, I done lost everything."

I said, "Leah, you ain't lost nothing.You just got water in a building.That's all you've got."

You know the rest of that story.The world came to Leah's doorstep.

When I did come back, then I was up there and I worked with John Folse.

John Folse was, oh gosh, he was magnificent.He would go around begging.He'd say, "You know my friend Leah?

She lost everything.She doesn't have this.You need to help her."

He got people to give me money, he built that bar for me, he helped me and everybody came to this city and helped Chef John Folse, Ella Brennan, Chef John Besh, colleagues not competitors joined with so many others in the business world and the community to help their friend.Together they managed to lift her spirits.Friends even saved most of the yard from the encroaching mold.As it was for so many others, rebuilding took time, years even to make a full comeback.

One of the funniest stories I think that Leah and I share, the second gumbo zaire after the flood I came to Holy Thursday with a group of friends and I happened to have my chef jacket on.So I'm walking around that dining room and people are clapping and Leah's in the kitchen and she hears all of this noise, you know?

So I'm shaking hands and had my chef coat on and Leah walks out and she sees me walking through this massive dining room full of people.She walks over to the microphone and she says, "I can't believe that John Folse is walking through my dining room shaking hands and taking credit for my gumbo zaire."

Everybody in the restaurant went crazy.

Even after the success and popularity of the restaurant, the Chases never wanted to leave this area.For many years a housing project stood next door.Sometimes the aging homes and buildings nearby would get rundown, but they love the people and the area.This was exactly where they wanted to be, surrounded by family, many of them working in the restaurant.

Cleo is my niece.

Cleo been in here for some 30-some years.I could not do without her.

My mother felt that we should never leave this community.We have the opportunity before we remodeled to maybe look at other sites in the city, but There is now a Dooky Chase's in the airport, a taste of Creole cooking for those on their way to or from somewhere else.Actually, the chef's favorite meal isn't Creole at all.Leah Chase loves meatballs and spaghetti.She doesn't like coffee and she really doesn't like people messing with her food, even if they are a President of the United States.

She has served two, President Barack Obama and President George W.Bush.

Leah Chase is held as the Queen of Creole Cuisine.

While accepting an award from the prestigious James Beard Foundation, she told a story about chastising Mr.Obama for adding hot sauce to her gumbo before even tasting it.

I cooked for what, two Presidents and they're wonderful people.Poor Mr.Obama.

We had a fight the first time, but Mr.Obama from Chicago, what you know about gumbo?

Nothing.Nothing.

When President George W.Bush came to Dooky's to help celebrate the reopening of the restaurant, Leah enlisted the help of her friend John Folse and his crew in the kitchen.

At the end of the meal, after it was all over and done, I stuck my head out of the kitchen like this and Leah's telling all these stories at the table.I said, "Leah Chase, you've been having me slave all day in that kitchen promising me that I was going to meet the President of the United States.

[inaudible 00:49:30] him five or six times within two feet of me and never mentioned my name one time."

I said, "You think I'm your slave or something?"

Leah Chase said, "Ain't it time?

Ain't it time for you to be my slave?"

The President and everybody just fell out.

When Disney came to New Orleans looking for a very American story, they found one in Mrs.Chase.In the Princess and the Frog, the princess, Tiana, dreams of owning her own restaurant one day.So Leah became a model for a princess.

She had a lot of fun with that.

She likes the make believe world and she tells visitors every year during Mardi Gras.

Leah Chase:I tell them, I say we live fairytale but that's all right.Fairytales are good sometimes.Mardi Gras time is all make believe time.We make believe we queens, we make believe everything and then we come back and go to work the next day, so it just fun to do that.

Michelle Miller:Even her restaurant supplies a bit of whimsy and fantasy for her.

Leah Chase:When I first built this I wanted that dining room to be a dining room and then I had a parlor in there with the antiques.I thought I was Scarlet O'Hara.But now I think it's time to get over that and I'll put some old tables back there where I can see some old people.

Dooky Chase, Jr:It had to be you.It had to be you.You see I wandered around and I finally found somebody who ... Michelle Miller:Still singing to his love on her birthday, the two of them stood together through so much.Leah realizes how much it cost him.

Leah his music and I always feel sorry that he could not continue his music because that, he is great at music and he was a great musician, so he sacrificed a lot of his life to make this thing work.

2016, Edgar Dooky Chase,        3 Junior passed away leaving behind his love and his legacy.

As she has handled her grief and sorrow throughout her long life, Leah Chase keeps Chase:I pray a lot, you know.

I'm a strong believer in prayers.I believe God whether it's fashionable or not fashionable.I pray every day.I pray for people that I know.I pray because I'm thankful for what I have and I pray for the strength to just go on and just do what I have to do.

John Folse:Coming from a place of impossibilities in the mind of the world to a place where she's looking at a pot of wiener jambalaya as a first opportunity to put a taste of Leah Chase in the mouth of New Orleans, to then be sought out globally for her talents, to be recognized by every imaginable food organization, to be just bowed to in homage to this woman, my God, how can you even express in words what accomplishment that is?

Michelle Miller:It's been a long road and all along the way she just takes the next step, welcomes all who cross her path and wonders what she's going to cook tomorrow.

She always says that she hopes she can live long enough to pay everybody back who helped her along the way.

Now I'm getting slow and that's the worst part of getting old.

You're getting slow as the dickens.My legs are beginning to get mobbly or whatever, so it slows me down, but I like to prepare food and I like to have it done right and fix something nice so people can eat it and enjoy it.I think I will be happy doing that for the rest of my life.

Nobody else gave me a thrill deep in my heart, Leah, my darling, I love you still.It had to be you, wonderful you.Nobody but Thank you