A New 26-Part Cooking Series Honoring Leah Chase Is Headed to Television

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A New Orleans public broadcasting station is celebrating the life and legacy of Leah Chase with a new cooking series featuring the late icon's family members.

According to a news release, WYES began filming Dooky Chase Kitchen: Leah's Legacy this summer on location in the legendary Dooky Chase kitchen. The show features Leah's grandson, Edgar "Dook" Chase IV, who now oversees the restaurant's kitchen; her niece Cleo Robinson, who joined Leah in the kitchen in 1980; and the restaurant's newest chef, Leah's great- granddaughter Zoe Chase. Leah's granddaughter, Eve Haydel, who has updated drink recipes from the restaurant's earlier days, will also appear.

Each program in the 26-part cooking series will explore a different chapter in the history of the New Orleans institution.

"On an episode about distinguished guests, the Chase chefs will share a recipe for grits and quail that Chase served at the restaurant in 2008 to President George W. Bush. Another episode will celebrate the restaurant's place in the history of the Civil Rights Movement," the news release teases. "Chefs will talk about the preparation of Creole Gumbo, a dish Chase served to Martin Luther King Jr. and other social activists when they held strategy sessions in the restaurant's upstairs dining room in the 1960s."

Leah, hailed the "Queen of Creole Cuisine," and her husband Edgar Lawrence "Dooky" Chase, Jr. ran Dooky Chase's Restaurant for more than 50 years. Over the generations, luminaries, presidents, and countless regular folk have dined on Leah's unforgettable Creole dishes.

Since Leah's death in 2019 at the age of 96, the restaurant has been in the hands of the couple's children and grandchildren.

The Dooky Chase Kitchen: Leah's Legacy is slated for national release in Spring 2023.