Leah Chase was the New Orleans chef and restaurateur known as the “Queen of Creole Cuisine.”
Chase led Dooky Chase’s Restaurant, a family business in New Orleans’s Tremé neighborhood. Under her direction, the restaurant became famous for Creole dishes such as gumbo, fried chicken, and red beans and rice. It also became an important meeting place during the civil rights era.
Chase’s career connected restaurant cooking, Black cultural history, and civic life. Her work helped make New Orleans Creole cuisine more widely known while preserving a family and community tradition. She also inspired the Disney character Tiana, the chef protagonist of The Princess and the Frog, although that fictional character is not a direct biography.