Sarah leah chase biography of martin

The chef Leah Chase has made a living, and a name, by working with her hands, but it’s her tongue that makes you wish you’d brought your notebook to lunch. “Never explain your actions,” she told me recently, interrupting my apology for having fallen out of touch. “Your enemies don’t believe it and your friends don’t need it.”

That adage came from her mother, Hortensia Lange, who gave birth to Leah in January 1923, just months after her first child died of burn complications from a toppled pot of scalded milk. “You don’t question your parents enough about things,” says Leah, who never considered how devastating that loss must have been for her mother until her own daughter and right-hand woman at Dooky Chase Restaurant, Emily, died during childbirth in 1990.

Leah’s life story is filled with heartache and humor, though the way she tells it—by punctuating sentences with a broad smile and another aphorism—leaves you remembering only the latter. The overriding themes at the Lange household in rural Madisonville, Louisiana, were faith and work. Leah’s father, Charles, supported his brood of eleven children by working in a shipyard and keeping a large kitchen garden. Chores were a way of life for everyone. Eating with Leah is the best way to learn about her childhood. Strawberry shortcake reminds her of making strawberry wine; okra gumbo, of sun-drying okra from the garden; roast quail, of shooting the birds that threatened the family’s sizable strawberry patch. Her mother would stew the quail with plums.

Her upbringing bred in Leah a fierce work ethic and a disdain for idleness. “I like to see people work their work,” she says. “Work that show.” It’s also surely what drove her into the workforce shortly after graduating from high school in New Orleans at just sixteen years old. (There was no high school for black students in Madisonville, so Leah lived with relatives in the city during the school year.) She first worked in Fre

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Chef

Leah Chase has become a New Orleans fixture as the widely respected doyenne of Creole cooking. Her restaurant, Dooky Chase's, remains an attractive landmark in the city, and was one of the first fine-dining establishments in the Crescent City that seated African-American patrons. She married into the family who first opened it, and over the years helped to establish Creole food as a legitimate cuisine in America. Her business was hard hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but she was determined to return. "We had to gut the walls and put in all new equipment," she told Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel writer Karen Herzog several months later, and though she noted that things were "coming along," she also said that "All the rebuilding efforts here seem too slow to me. I don't have a lot of time. I'm 83 years old and would like to just do what I have to do."

Grew Up on Farm

Chase was born in 1923 in Madisonville, Louisiana, a town in the St. Tammany Parish on the Tchefuncte River near Lake Ponchartrain. Her father was a shipyard worker, but her parents and 11 siblings also farmed a plot of land that provided the family's food. Her family was Creole, a term that was first used to denote the French and Spanish settlers in the New Orleans area when it was still European-held land, but by the time she was born the word referred to the region's mixed-race population—some of whom, like Chase, had Native American blood too. Hers came from a Choctaw Indian grandmother.

The Chase family grew okra, sweet potatoes, and strawberries, and they also had a steady supply of chicken and pork from a few animals they raised. Though food from their yard was abundant, other resources were scarcer, and Chase and her sisters wore dresses made from flour sacks. As one of nine daughters, she learned to cook at an early age, taking turns with her sisters in the kitchen. The family was Roman Catholic, and because there was no high school for blacks in Madisonville,

American chef and artist

Leyah (Leah) Chase (née Lange; January 6, 1923 – June 1, 2019) was an American chef based in New Orleans, Louisiana. An author and television personality, she was known as the Queen of Creole Cuisine, advocating both African-American art and Creole cooking. Her restaurant, Dooky Chase, was known as a gathering place during the 1960s among many who participated in the Civil Rights Movement, and was known as a gallery due to its extensive African-American art collection. In 2018 it was named one of the 40 most important restaurants of the past 40 years by Food & Wine.

Chase was the recipient of a multitude of awards and honors. In her 2002 biography, Chase's awards and honors occupy over two pages. Chase was inducted into the James Beard Foundation's Who's Who of Food & Beverage in America in 2010. She was honored with a lifetime achievement award from the Southern Foodways Alliance in 2000. Chase received honorary degrees from Tulane University, Dillard University,Our Lady of Holy Cross College, Madonna College,Loyola University New Orleans, and Johnson & Wales University. She was awarded Times-Picayune Loving Cup Award in 1997. The Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana, named a permanent gallery in Chase's honor in 2009.

Early life

Leah Chase was born to Catholic Creole parents in Madisonville, Louisiana. Her ancestry included African, French, and Spanish. Chase's father was