Turning The Tables

By Sarah Baird

1890s:

HOW NELLIE MURRAY BECAME THE FOREMOST CATERER IN LA LOUISIANNE “Who does not know Nellie Murray, the famous cuisinière, who for so many years has been the chief caterer [in] New Orleans? Indeed, so well-known is Nellie in ultra-fashionable circles, that not to know her is to argue oneself unknown,” proclaims an article in the December 4, 1896 edition of the New Orleans Daily Picayune.

Born in Bayou Goula on the plantation of Paul Octave Hébert, the fourteenth governor of Louisiana, around 1835, Murray came from a long line of esteemed Creole cuisinières: enslaved cooks who were charged with preparing lush, sumptuous meals for high society families. Murray spent her childhood watching as her mother and grandmother labored over seasoning dishes just so, setting tables with the linens perfectly crisp and making sure the drip coffee was prepared just right — skills Murray would forge into a lucrative career in the post-Reconstruction era.

During the 1890s, Nellie Murray became the foremost caterer in New Orleans for wealthy, upper-class clientele, carving out her prime position as the go-to chef for families like the Howards and Whitneys. Murray’s aristocratic demeanor paired with her flair for entertaining cemented her celebrity status in the city and beyond, landing her enviable publicfacing roles like the chef de cuisine at the Louisiana Mansion Club during the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago and serving Susan B. Anthony at a private luncheon as part of the 1903 National American Woman Suffrage Association convention.

1930s:

LENA RICHARD: A TRAILBLAZER OF “FIRSTS” FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN We’re taught in school about how Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon, how his bravery, smarts and commitment to the betterment of the world landed him on the craggy lunar landscape on that fateful day in 1969. But pound for pound, New Orleans’ own Lena Richard is every bit a trailblazer as Neil Armstrong, if not more so: knocking down walls and upending stereotypes as an African American woman raised in the Jim Crow South — and not just in the kitchen, but also through publishing, entrepreneurship, education and media.

A New Roads, Louisiana, native and Fanny Farmer Cooking School-trained chef, Richard is often described as “Martha Stewart before there was a Martha Stewart” — and that she was.

While catering for the city’s socialites and running restaurants throughout the 1920s and '30s, Richard found her recipes to be so popular that she decided to compile them into a cookbook. The 1939 self-published work, Lena’s Richard’s Cook Book — which was republished for a national audience by Houghton-Mifflin in 1940 and renamed New Orleans Cook Book — pulled the curtain back on Creole recipes like courtbouillon, baked stuffed oysters and calas tous chads that, until Richard came along, had been regarded primarily as dishes of the well-to-do. “These are no longer dishes to be prepared in secrecy by French chefs, to be eaten by the rich,” Richards wrote. It is considered the first Creole cookbook written by an African American.

But a definitive cookbook is only part of her legacy. Around this time, Miss Lena also continued to operate a cooking school for her community; opened her largest restaurant yet, The Gumbo House; started packaging frozen food; and made the most leap-of-faith move of all: She became the star of a twice-weekly show on a newfangled device called television. Lena Richard’s New Orleans Cook Book

ran from 1947 to 1949 on WDSU, and is widely regarded as the first instance of a Black woman hosting a television show in American history. Sadly, no recordings of the show remain today.

Richard died suddenly of a heart attack in 1950, but over 70 years later, her influence continues to reverberate throughout the ages. Miss Lena wanted to use her time on earth to shift the landscape for future generations of aspiring Black chefs in New Orleans and beyond: to teach, in her own words, “men and women the art of food preparation and serving in order that they would become capable of preparing and serving food for any occasion and also that they might be in a position to demand higher wages.”

1940s:

THE COMMANDING GRAND DAME OF NEW ORLEANS FINE DINING: ELLA BRENNAN It can be a little overwhelming to consider, even in passing, Ella Brennan’s legacy in New Orleans. After all, if you begin mapping out the city’s culinary landmarks — from Old Absinthe House to Brennan’s to the 14-restaurant empire she helped birth nationwide — it becomes glaringly obvious within seconds that Brennan (and her wide-ranging, occasionally quarrelsome family tree of siblings and children)

1950s:

WILLIE MAE SEATON’S LEGACY EXTENDS FAR BEYOND (LEGENDARY) FRIED CHICKEN When you sink your teeth into a piece of Willie Mae Seaton’s stuff-of-legend fried chicken on any given afternoon at Willie Mae’s Scotch House, you can easily tell there’s something charmed about it. Some might say that maybe — just maybe — it’s the little pinch of Mississippi soul that the luminary of Creole cuisine added to her recipes.

Born and raised just outside of Jackson, Seaton moved to New Orleans in 1940 and opened Willie Mae’s Scotch House in 1957, initially as a bar that just happened to serve food. (The bar’s signature drink? Scotch and milk.) After moving to the restaurant’s current location on St. Ann Street in the early 1970s, Seaton’s cooking — and, in particular, her secret recipe for wet-battered fried chicken — became the Sixth Ward’s best-kept secret.

But by 2005, Seaton’s delicious secret was out. Just months before Hurricane Katrina flooded the restaurant, Willie Mae’s Scotch House was honored with a James Beard Award, placing it rightfully among the ranks of America’s Classic Restaurants for the Southern Region. “It’s just such a good feeling. I just can’t explain it,” Seaton, said, teary-eyed during her acceptance speech. “I do my best to try to serve the people.”

And serve the people she did. Willie Mae’s Scotch House is a still a place where everyone gathers: Black and white; lawyers and store clerks; the young and the old; the neighborhood regulars living two doors down and the high-and-mighty folks who take a special trip just to sit within its walls, like President Barack Obama, who made a pilgrimage to Willie Mae’s for lunch in 2015. There’s a reason the line out the door has become as much a part of the Willie Mae’s mythology today as the food itself.

“They know about me ‘cause when you treat people nice...word gets around, you know. It helps to support you,” Seaton, who passed away in 2015 at the age of 99, told the Southern Foodways Alliance in 2006 after returning to rebuild after the storm. “And there it is, baby; I just got to pick up the pieces and keep walking — ‘cause God was able to save our life.”

1960s:

LEAH CHASE “CHANGED THE COURSE OF AMERICA OVER A BOWL OF GUMBO” When some remember Leah Chase, they focus on her cooking: the fried chicken, the shrimp Clemenceau, the Holy Thursday gumbo z’herbes that is perhaps as sacred as the Lenten day itself in many circles. Undoubtedly the preeminent authority on Creole cooking, Chase, along with her husband, Edgar “Dooky” Chase II, turned Dooky Chase’s Restaurant from a neighborhood sandwich shop and lottery ticket outpost into the premier restaurant for African Americans to gather, celebrate and enjoy themselves in the heavily segregated Jim Crow South of the 1950s. And by the early 2000s, Chase’s well-known determination had elevated Dooky Chase to national landmark status, serving Black luminaries from James Baldwin to Quincy Jones. Even the legendary Ray Charles

PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO sang, “I went to Dooky Chase to get me something to eat / The waitress looked at me and said, ‘Ray, you sure look beat.’”

When some remember Leah Chase, they focus on activism: serving the Freedom Riders when they came through New Orleans and offering up Dooky Chase as a place for Black and white organizers to gather and discuss strategy during the Civil Rights movement. As she often said in interviews, “We changed the course of American over a bowl of gumbo and some fried chicken” — and she was not wrong.

When some remember Leah Chase, they focus on her love of art: the bright colors and vivid scenes that leap off the walls at Dooky Chase, which is perhaps the finest gallery of African American art in Louisiana. Though she was 54 before stepping foot into an official art museum, Chase’s collection — a large swath of which is on display for diners at the restaurant — now includes

the likes of Samella Lewis, John T. Biggers and Jacob Lawrence.

When some remember Leah Chase, they focus on her tenacity: part of a generation of African American women who “set their faces against the wind without looking back,” as Jessica B. Harris wrote in Mrs. Chase’s New York Times obituary. Never shying away from doing the right thing, Chase became not only a cultural icon in the culinary world, but for New Orleans itself. Her resilience and life-affirming attitude were unshakable even in the face of insurmountable upheaval.

And though Chase would likely just attribute her place in the history books to the results of hard work and God’s grace, she was a force unlike any other. “I just think that God pitches us a low, slow curve, but he doesn’t want us to strike out,” she told The New York Times’ Kim Severson in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “I think everything he throws at you is testing your strength, and you don’t cry about it, and you go on.”

1970s:

RUTH FERTEL’S JOURNEY FROM SCRAPPY SINGLE MOTHER TO HOSPITALITY HONCHO Ruth Fertel had already lived plenty of lives before the fateful day in 1965 when she noticed an ad in the classified section of The Times-Picayune listing local restaurant, Chris Steak House, for sale.

Brainy and determined from a young age, Fertel graduated from Louisiana State University with a degree in chemistry at the ripe old age of 19, became the first female Thoroughbred trainer in Louisiana while bringing up two young sons, then found work at Tulane Medical School as a lab technician following her divorce. But despite her preternatural ability to be three steps ahead of everyone else in the room, Fertel could’ve never seen coming the success that her steakhouse, Ruth’s Chris, would have as it launched into the publicly traded, international hospitality empire of 150 franchises (and counting!) it is today.

After reviewing the classified ad, Fertel put her home up as collateral in the mid-1960s to purchase Chris Steak House, and quickly got to work learning quite

literally everything about the business: from cutting steaks herself to overseeing the books with eagle-eyed precision. She also hired an almost entirely female waitstaff, including many single moms, a move that proved from the beginning Fertel wasn’t going to be doing things the same way as the “good old boys” club that dominated the steakhouse scene at the time.

After a fire destroyed the original Chris Steak House in 1976, Ruth planned to move the entire business to a larger space. Her contract, however, stipulated that the name “Chris Steak House” could only be used in the exact, initial location. With only a week to come up with a solution — and not wanting to lose name recognition or her customer base — Fertel settled on “Ruth’s Chris Steak House” as a way to combine familiarity with a not-so-subtle wink that a new generation of restaurateur, a woman, was in charge.

“I’ve always hated the name,” Fertel told Fortune in 1998. “But we’ve always managed to work around it…[and] make the steak the star.”

Undoubtedly, Fertel, who died of lung cancer in 2002, played a pivotal role in redefining steakhouse culture for a modern era, taking away the backslapping, maledominated, cigar-smoke-thick dinners of old and creating a space where everyone is welcome to enjoy a fine filet mignon.

1980s:

HONORING TRADITION WITH CELESTINE DUNBAR… From the very start, there was no missing the fact that Dunbar’s Creole Cooking was a family affair.

“And after all these years, Dunbar’s is still a family business,” a 1998 Times-Picayune article noted of the stick-to-your-ribs comfort food restaurant, which opened in 1984. “Dunbar’s sisters and granddaughter wait tables, [her] brother-in-law is the chef, [her] grandson washes dishes and mom is still behind the cash register ‘keeping us all in check.’”

Running the show then and now — with a warm smile and a commitment to “give the customers what they want” — is none other than “mom” and restauranter herself, Celestine Dunbar.

This mom-and-pop (but, let’s be honest, mostly mom) restaurant quickly became the go-to lunchtime stop throughout the 1980s and 1990s for Uptown regulars who knew the daily lunch specials like clockwork, college kids searching for reassuring meal, and devotees of Dunbar’s dream-aboutthem hot plate staples like greens and rice covered with turkey neck gravy.

“Walk into Dunbar’s Creole Cooking on Freret Street at the end of the week and see customers happily munching on the new Friday special — smothered okra and shrimp,” the 1998 Times-Picayune article observed. “Red beans and rice with fried chicken is so popular that it’s served every day.”

From profiles in Gourmet magazine to likes of Mohammed Ali stopping by for a plate, Celestine Dunbar’s commitment to bringing the downhome comfort food she learned at the knees of her father — who taught her that the roux should be “browner than a copper penny” — never wavered, even when faced with tragedy. After Hurricane Katrina destroyed Dunbar’s longtime Freret Street location, Celestine served her signature Creole dishes from a pop-up stand at the Loyola University student center for a time and finally, after a long and winding road, reopened her restaurant on Earhart Avenue in 2017. The community response to the restaurant’s homecoming was familial fanfare, like welcoming back a long-lost cousin after years away. And while this incarnation of Dunbar’s closed in early 2022, rest assured that Celestine, now 78, will still be bringing her beloved homecooked New Orleanian food to her devoted, hungry fans — no matter the obstacles.

1990s:

…AND BREAKING TRADITION WITH SUSAN SPICER While most chefs across New Orleans were “bamming!” with Emeril and still blackening their dishes a la Paul Prudhomme, Susan Spicer brought a subdued ease to the city’s fine dining scene when her restaurant, Bayona, opened in 1990.

“In a town famous for its flamboyance, Susan Spicer is the city’s stealth chef… she speaks softly, has no desire to build a restaurant empire and serves neither Cajun

nor Creole food,” Marian Burros lauded in a 1998 New York Times article. “But if she is quiet and self-deprecating, the food at her restaurant, Bayona, shines… [relying] on the goodness of the ingredients and her captivating approach.”

Banking influence from her travels across Europe and along the west coast then channeling it into her dishes, Spicer became the national face of a “new” style of New Orleans cooking that was less about showmanship and more about whispers of surprise on the plate. After winning the James Beard Award for Best Chef South in 1993 and being inducted into the organization’s crème de la crème Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America 17 years later, Spicer continues to leave her fingerprints all over the city’s dining scene: from Herbsaint and Mondo, to the more recently opened Rosedale, which comes full circle for the chef with a menu dedicated to Louisiana flavors.

2000s:

LINDA GREEN’S YA-KA-MEIN IS A CURE-ALL FOR THE BODY AND SOUL It’s happened to everyone at some point. While grabbing an after-work boulevardier with coworkers, you bump into a trio of high school pals you’ve only seen over Zoom for two years; which leads to an impromptu “let’s catch up!” dinner with plenty of oysters and a couple bottles of Tempranillo; which leads to someone saying, “I hear Kermit Ruffins is playing tonight!” and, well, you know the rest.

Fortunately, Miss Linda Green’s ya-kamein is there to sooth troubled systems when our brains are beatboxing and stomachs have turned tempest-like after a night of bacchanalian overindulgence.

Ya-ka-mein (also called “Old Sober,” for obvious reasons) is a hybrid of African American and Asian American flavors, combining spools of noodles and beef in a salty, soy sauce-rich broth alongside a bobbing hard-boiled egg and dusting of green onions over top. A grab-and-go corner store favorite meant to be gobbled up in a hurry or on the move, ya-ka-mein proves that sometimes food can be the get-right medicine you need — and Ms. Linda has the prescription.

Referred to as “The Ya-ka-mein Lady” by those in the know, Green has created a cult following throughout the decades, popping up at festivals and second lines, and most recently every Thursday night at the Ogden Museum After Hours.

“I keep telling people all the time that ya-ka-mein is New Orleans’ best kept secret,” Miss Linda told me back in 2018. “In our community growing up, ya-kamein was known as a poor man’s dish, but also a delicacy. When my grandmother would cook it, the aroma would go out the window and into the streets, and folks would say, ‘Mama Georgia’s cookin’ her ya-ka-mein!’ They’d come with their bowls to sit on the porch and eat it.”

But with the way white-table-cloth chefs are adapting their own versions of the Styrofoam-cup favorite as elevated cuisine and Miss Linda has become a sought-out icon from the pages of Rolling Stone to Food Network’s Chopped, if her cure-all potion still flies under the radar among the non-hungover masses, it won’t for long.

2010s:

NINA COMPTON AND SUE ZEMANICK FUSE INTERNATIONAL FLAVORS WITH LOCAL FLAIR Take a quick scan over the resumes of both Nina Compton and Sue Zemanick, and it’s difficult to identify pretty much any award or accolade the two haven’t received over the past 15 years. (Short of a Nobel Peace Prize, that is.)

Both are winners of the highly-coveted, ultra-prestigious James Beard Award for Best Chef South — Zemanick in 2014; Compton in 2018 — and both made Food and Wine’s annual “who’s who” list of best new chefs before their 40th birthdays. They’re both household names thanks to their appearances on Top Chef (Compton) and Top Chef Masters (Zemanick), but at the end of the day, their most important victory is ushering in a breath of fresh air when it comes to woman-helmed fine dining in New Orleans.

In Compton’s case, it was, in fact, the aforementioned filming of Top Chef that made her fall in love with New Orleans, and the feeling has been mutual since she opened Compere Lapin in 2015. A Caribbean (and, in particular, St. Lucian) influence breezes over dishes at the flagship Warehouse District restaurant, with plates like curried goat with sweet potato gnocchi and blackened pig ear with smoked aioli building a loyal following among locals and in-the-know tourists alike. Her second New Orleans restaurant, Bywater American Bistro, also pulls from both regional and international culinary quivers while creating a convivial, neighborhood space, with dishes like barbequed octopus with smoked carrot anchoring the menu.

Because wherever Compton and Zemanick cook, diners are welcome to come with an inquisitive mind and an empty stomach, ready to eat food prepared

2020s:

MEG BICKFORD DONS THE TOQUE AS FINE DINING’S NEXT GENERATION From the icon herself, Ella Brennan, to Sue Zemanick, who worked at the restaurant before assuming the reigns at Gautreau's, any story of Commander’s Palace should include a chapter on women in leadership — with Meg Bickford as a prominent character.

Bickford took over the executive chef position from Tory McPhail in late 2020 after working in the Commander’s family of restaurants since 2008, and has since been carving out her own unique approach to Haute Creole cuisine while adhering to a hyper-local “dirt-to-plate within 100 miles” ethos. Turns out, it’s working beautifully.

The Gulf Coast terroir is hard to miss in dishes like cherried marrow antelope: a grilled south Texas antelope chop drenched in melted bone marrow and dark cherry compound butter over stone ground grits with brandy-soaked cherry-bone jus rôti. And while some menu stalwarts remain as popular as ever — the turtle soup au sherry isn’t going anywhere, of course — Bickford’s imaginative additions genuflect to the bounty of Louisiana while adding a studied earthiness that would make all Commander’s ladies proud — even Miss Brennan herself.

“If I can inspire someone to feel like they can do anything, then that is exactly what I intend to do,” Bickford told USA Today’s The American South shortly after assuming her new position in November 2020. “If you haven’t noticed…women have been running Commander’s for generations. It was never lost on me that the head chef here always worked for or with women. It’s kind of a natural thing that’s been going on around here.”

And with this through-line of brave, creative, female chefs serving as a blueprint for New Orleans’ culinary future, there’s no shortage of role models to help inspire greatness for the next 130 years.