About 50 years ago, Jeff Zapata experienced something that changed his life: He bit into his first oyster po-boy.
Even though he has ordered plenty of po-boys, “I don’t think I’ve eaten one since then that remotely compared to it,” said Zapata, 75, who is retired after a career in the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Kenner Police Department and a stint as Ben Zahn’s administrative aide when Zahn sat on the Jefferson Parish Council.
That memorable sandwich came from Dooky Chase’s Restaurant, the landmark eatery at Orleans Avenue and North Miro Street. Besides being celebrated for its Creole cuisine, the Tremé restaurant has become famous for its role in the Civil Rights Movement: In the years when segregation was the law, groups met there, in defiance of a ban on interracial mixing, to plan strategy in their drive for racial equality.
Leah Chase, the chef and the restaurant’s driving force, who worked in the kitchen well into her 10th decade, died in 2019. She was 96.
Zapata said he wanted to find out how the family-owned restaurant has been doing since then. As he wrote to "Curious Louisiana," "Who currently owns Dooky Chase’s restaurant, and relation to Ms. Leah Chase?"
Although longtime patrons miss Chase’s charismatic presence, Dooky Chase’s is still dishing up such favorites as gumbo, fried chicken and peach cobbler. Edgar “Dook” Chase IV, the grandson of Leah and Edgar “Dooky” Chase Jr., is the executive chef, and three relatives — chefs Cleo Robinson and Zoe Chase and beverage manager Eve Marie Haydel — also work there.
“My grandparents certainly built a strong, strong foundation, not only for the family but also for the community,” Edgar Chase IV said.
A growing enterprise
Dooky Chase’s influence is moving beyond its neighborhood. Two outlets — Dook’s Burgers and Leah’s Kitchen — are nourishing travelers at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, and Chapter IV, Dook Chase’s breakfast and lunch restaurant near New Orleans’ City Hall, opened in January. And a 26-part series, “The Dooky Chase Kitchen: Leah’s Legacy,” is on WYES-TV.
At the Tremé restaurant, plans are in the works to restore the upstairs dining room, which had been the site of civil rights and labor union meetings and social events, said Edgar Chase III, one of the restaurant’s owners.
It will occupy a space that has been used for storage. Work hasn’t begun, but Chase said he hopes it will be complete by next June.
That will represent the latest chapter in the history of a neighborhood institution that began in 1941.
Until then, that space had been an empty lot across North Miro Street from Kati Conforto’s grocery store. Chase’s grandparents — Emily Tenette Chase and the first Edgar “Dooky” Chase — bought that tract with money that Emily Chase had earned by selling sandwiches out of a side window of Conforto’s store.
'The power of God'
The Chases bought the lot across the street in 1941 and opened a restaurant and bar. Edgar Chase III said it represented an act of faith: “My grandfather believed in the power of God and the redemption of God. He believed God would make a way for the family.”
The spot where Conforto’s store used to stand is vacant, although for about two years after Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005, it held a FEMA trailer where Leah and Edgar Chase Jr. lived while the storm-battered restaurant was being restored.
The fledgling enterprise became a neighborhood magnet whose clientele included the heavyweight boxer Joe Louis, Edgar Chase III said.
At first, the Chases just put napkins on the tables. But after Leah Lange married Edgar “Dooky” Chase Jr. in 1946 and started working in the kitchen and other parts of the restaurant’s operation, “my mother put white tablecloths on the tables.”
Here’s why: Having waited tables in the French Quarter, she knew how to make customers feel welcome — an important gesture in a time when white tablecloth establishments were off-limits for African Americans.
Notable diners
The clientele included such notable Black entertainers as Lena Horne, Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan. Ray Charles mentioned it in his song "Early in the Morning." ("I went to Dooky Chase to get me something to eat.") Giants of the Civil Rights Movement, including Martin Luther King Jr., his father and Thurgood Marshall, came, too.
President George W. Bush ate there, as did Sen. Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, when Leah Chase stopped him from adding hot sauce to her gumbo.
She befriended artists throughout her life; works by such artists as Jacob Lawrence and Elizabeth Catlett adorn the restaurant’s walls. In a late-life burst of pop-culture fame, Chase was the model for Princess Tiana, the first Black heroine of a Walt Disney cartoon movie, “The Princess and the Frog.”
The restaurant family’s tradition lives on. Edgar Chase V, who turned 10 on Father’s Day, occasionally helps out in the kitchen. He hasn’t made a career choice yet, but, his father said, “he certainly likes to eat.”