VIRGINIA BEACH — I was elated when The Dooky Chase Kitchen: Leah’s Legacy premiered recently on local public media.
I love to cook, and many of us who love Creole cooking are beneficiaries of the remarkable legacy of the late Leah Chase, who for generations was the heart and soul of Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in the Treme section of New Orleans.
Many years ago, I met the queen matron of Creole cuisine in her New Orleans restaurant. While chasing a cooking lesson or two, I stumbled upon the Civil Rights figure while pleading with her to show me how to make her famous fried chicken and Creole gumbo. Eventually, I came out of my trance and mumbled something to her about making gumbo.
Stunned to be seated opposite her in her restaurant, I asked her about her early years while working up the nerve to ask her how she made that popular, delicious stew. I remember what she told me to this day: “To make a good gumbo, you have to make a good roux.” Everything great starts with the right foundation.
Chase grew up in Madisonville, Louisiana, a small community on the Tchefuncte River across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. (You can buy Lake Pontchartrain crabs if you want an authentic bayou taste to gumbo.)
Dooky Chase Sr. and Emily Chase founded the restaurant, which evolved from a sandwich shop that also sold lottery tickets. Edgar Dooky Chase Jr. married Leah Chase in 1946, according to a history of the restaurant, and changed the family business into a sit-down restaurant. She would become known as the “Queen of Creole Cuisine,” and the restaurant’s walls became the first gallery for Black artists in the city.
Meeting Leah Chase, who died in 2019 at the age of 96, and learning the secret to a roux was an overwhelming experience.
I dined in the room where Civil Rights leaders once met with white allies before it was legal for Black and white people to dine together. According to the U.S. Civil Rights Trail’s history of the restaurant, Chase allowed activists to meet in an upstairs dining room.
“From those strategy sessions, planned and scheduled activities propelled civil rights and protests in the courts and onto the streets of New Orleans,” the U.S. Civil Rights Trail entry about the restaurant says. “In the 1960s, Martin Luther King Jr. and others would join these local leaders for strategy sessions and dialogue over meals in the upstairs meeting room at Dooky’s.”
“We changed the course of America in this restaurant over bowls of gumbo,” Chase once said.
The restaurant was where the Civil Rights movement got some momentum. Harry Belafonte, Martin Luther King, Sammy Davis, Jr., and other freedom fighters would eat there. Later, U.S. presidents visited, too.
Today, Chefs Dook Chase, Leah Chase’s grandson, and Zoe Chase, her granddaughter, tapped into their grandmother’s legacy, which they are sharing through the show.
After watching the new show, I cooked.
For gumbo, I start with a perfect light brown roux, the base thickener for a lot of Creole and Cajun cooking, as well as, of course, French cuisine.
As I learned it, it is a simple mixture of oil and flour, though roux for thickening sauces and soups is often made by cooking butter and flour together. In an article by Tasting Table, Chase once said butter worked for some forms of roux – but never for the base of a gumbo.
For that, Chase used a vegetable oil such as canola oil, but not olive oil, according to Tasting Table.
Chef Leah told me not to burn the roux because the food will taste burned. It’s good advice from someone who remains a wonderful example of leadership, craft and excellence.
The show is available through public media outlets such as WHRO, with episodes available to members via WHRO Passport.
The author is a writer and documentary filmmaker who grew up in Norfolk and lived in Virginia Beach for much of his life. He ran a production company, worked in college athletics and was curator at an art gallery in Virginia Beach for years.
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