Behind the Cookbook: The Dooky Chase COOKBOOK

The Dooky Chase Cookbook, first published in 1990 and re-issued last year, is the latest classic title to be added to ckbk. Its author, Leah Chase (1923–2019), was known as the “Queen of Creole Cuisine”. While she stood less than 5 feet tall, she had an outsize influence on food culture in her hometown of New Orleans, and far beyond.

Both as a chef and as an activist, Leah Chase was an inspiration to many. For decades, Dooky Chase’s Restaurant became a place of pilgrimage for A-list celebrities including chefs, musician and politicians from Julia Child and Anthony Bourdain to Beyoncé and Barack Obama.

The restaurant owed its name to her husband, Edgar “Dooky” Chase Jr., whose family owned a sandwich shop which was transformed by Leah into a hugely popular sit-down restaurant with a focus on New Orleans’s traditional Creole cuisine.

In the 1960s the restaurant acted as a hub for meetings between leaders of the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall, playing a vital role as an alternative to the many whites-only establishments in the city at that time.

But the restaurant wasn’t just a meeting place—it was famed for its food which celebrated the best of New Orleans’ Creole cuisine, blending French, Spanish, African, and Caribbean influences with Southern cooking traditions. Signature dishes included Gumbo z’Herbes (a green gumbo served during Lent) and Shrimp Clemenceau (a Creole classic with shrimp, mushrooms, and potatoes), not to mention the ever popular Southern Fried Chicken.

New Orleans is not only at the heart of Southern food culture, but also is world-famouse for its music. Musicians including as Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson were fans of the restaurant, and it appears in the lyrics to the Ray Charles song, Early in the Morning (“I went to Dooky Chase's to get something to eat / The waitress looked at me and said / ‘Ray, you sure look beat’"). Leah Chase even has a cameo appearance in Beyoncé’s video for the song Lemonade.

Dooky Chase’s culinary influence

Chefs who cite Leah Chase as mentor and culinary influence including Emeril Lagasse, John Besh, Nina Compton and Marcus Samuelsson. In 2016 her huge contribution to the world of food was recognized with the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award.

The first of Chase’s two cookbooks, The Dooky Chase Cookbook (1990) is now available on ckbk. It includes 250 Creole recipes along with anecdotes from the kitchen in the author’s distinctive voice. A followup memoir-cookbook, And Still I Cook, was published in 2003 and will also soon be available on ckbk.

Listen to Leah Chase tell Dooky Chase’s story in her own words

To get a sense of the formidable woman who built this nationally acclaimed institution, listen to the BBC Food Programme special episode from 2017 in which presenter Dan Saladino travels to New Orleans to speak to Leah, and is blown away by her sheer energy and presence at the age of 93, describing her as “one of the most positive and life affirming human beings I’ve ever met.”

Which dishes to try first

Many Creole dishes are based on the ‘holy trinity’ of creole cuisine, onion, bell peppers and celery. Try red beans, jambalaya or redfish court bouillon. Or you could follow Barack Obama’s lead and go for the classics, southern fried chicken and gumbo. Just remember to hold the hot sauce! If you want to know more about gumbo, there’s an entire episode of The Food Programme on that subject, emphasizing just how central the dish is to New Orleans’s culinary identity.

The most popular recipes from The Dooky Chase Cookbook

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