New Orleans’ Queen of Hearts is gone

Mrs. Leyah (Leah) Lange Chase, owner and chef of famed New Orleans restaurant Dooky Chase’s and wife of the late Edgar L. “Dooky” Chase, transitioned to glory on June 1, 2019. She was 96.

Mrs. Chase was an international treasure and world renowned Chef, but to New Orleanians she was the quintessential matriarch, a queen of hearts, who like many New Orleans mothers and women, was sweet, charitable and humble, but also a stern, bold and no nonsense lady. She and husband, Edgar Lawrence “Dooky” Chase Jr. ran Dooky Chase’s Restaurant at 2301 Orleans Avenue for six decades and counting; through four generations of the Chase family.

Born on January 6, 1923 in New Orleans, Chase was one of 14 children. She was raised in the small town of Madisonville, LA. After completing high school at St. Mary’s Academy, In 1946, she married local musician Edgar “Dooky” Chase Jr., whose father had opened a street corner stand selling lottery tickets and his wife’s homemade po’boy sandwiches. Eventually, Leah and Dooky Jr. took over the business, which by then had become a sit-down restaurant and a favorite local gathering place.

Mrs. Chase leaves a legacy of love of family and community, civil rights, philanthropy and the best creole cuisine in New Orleans that her children Stella, Leah, and Edgar Lawrence “Dooky” Chase, III will carry forth. Daughter Emily predeceased her, as did her husband of 70 years, “Dooky” Jr., who passed on November 22, 2016.

Aside from more than 100 awards and the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award for culinary excellence, Mrs. Chase and Dooky Jr. were much more than award-winning restauranteurs.

They continued to support the civil rights movement throughout the restaurant’s existence. Civil rights activists gathered to dine and strategize there, among them New Orleans’ own civil rights attorneys A.P. Tureaud and Mayor Ernest “Dutch” Morial, U.S. Ambassador and former Atlanta Mayor Rev. Andrew Young, Louisiana’s first Black State Supreme Court Justice Revius Ortique, the first Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Dr. Ralph Abernathy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who often met over a bowl of gumbo in the secluded Upstairs Dining Room. Doris Castle, one of the restaurant’s employees, often served patrons while her daughter, Oretha Castle Haley and fellow Freedom Riders met there.

Dooky Chase’s Restaurant also served both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, Hank Aaron, Ernest Gaines, Bill Cosby, Quincy Jones, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington and a list of luminaries too extensive to recount.

At Dooky’s there’s a photo of “The Princess and the Frog,” the 2009 American animated musical film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Set in New Orleans, the movie features a beautiful girl named Tiana, who dreams of owning a restaurant and a frog prince who desperately wants to be human.

“Walt Disney Animation Studios CEO John Lasseter decided to base Disney’s first African-American princess on Mrs. Chase’s life after dining at Dooky’s and speaking with her.

Mrs. Chase life’s purpose was to help others. She traveled to cook for various charities, helped raise money for food banks and scholarships. Passionate about education, she and Dooky Jr. founded the Edgar L. “Dooky” Jr. and Leah Chase Family Foundation, which cultivates and supports historically disenfranchised organizations via contributions to education, creative and culinary arts and social justice.

New Orleans will miss Mrs. Chase not only for her excellent food but for her entrepreneurial spirit, her love of community, and her willingness to help others. The Queen of Hearts is gone but the lessons she shared about being a productive, sharing human being remains. They are lessons we all would do well to emulate.

This article originally published in the June 10, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.