The Family-Run New Orleans Restaurant That Has Bob Dylan's Stamp Of Approval

New Orleans, Louisiana, is a town known best for its music, food, art, and celebrations. There are an overwhelming number of spots serving authentic Cajun and Creole food across the city, but not all have deep cultural and political roots in the city — nor have all been endorsed by a wide range of celebrities. "We ate at Dooky Chase's Restaurant on the corner of North Miro and Orleans," Bob Dylan shared on his X account in 2024. "If you're ever there, I highly recommend it."

Dooky Chase's Restaurant in New Orleans is no stranger to celebrity endorsements. It was Ray Charles' favorite Creole restaurant, and countless stars have enjoyed a meal there, including Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, media personalities like Oprah Winfrey, and singer-songwriter Beyoncé. The restaurant is famous for its signature fried chicken and gumbo, and, of course, other classic Creole dishes like crawfish étouffée, red beans and rice, and shrimp clemenceau, in which shrimp, peas, potatoes, and mushrooms are all sautéed to perfection in butter and white wine.

A family-run establishment, Dooky Chase's Restaurant, has served as a hub for community, political movements, art, and culture for almost 80 years. That's no small feat in the restaurant business. It's no wonder it got an endorsement from such a cultural icon.

Edgar "Dooky" Chase and his wife Emily opened the restaurant in 1941, but it began two years prior as a small shop that sold sandwiches and lottery tickets. While the restaurant is named after her father-in-law, it was Leah Chase, who was a driving force in Creole cuisine, that helped reshape the restaurant. After she married Chase Sr.'s son, Edgar Dooky Chase Jr., in 1946, Leah Chase transformed the sandwich joint and bar into a slightly more formal, sit-down restaurant that highlighted Creole culinary traditions as well as African American art.

When Leah Chase passed away in 2019, she was known as the "Queen of Creole Cuisine." In fact, she even served as the inspiration behind Disney's Princess Tiana from "The Princess and the Frog." It's no wonder that Dooky Chase's Restaurant became not only famous for its Creole dishes, but also as a hub for political activism and a place for the African American community to safely gather.

Despite much of the South being deeply segregated at the time, Chase made sure that the restaurant was welcoming to both black and white folks, who could meet over gumbo to strategize. Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement would lay plans over meals and drinks in the meeting room upstairs in the restaurant, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall. Given the theme of civil rights in some of Dylan's songs, it seems fitting that the songwriter would gravitate towards a place steeped in cultural and political history.