American culture: chef Leah Chase

Food brings people together. We mark occasions like birthdays and holidays with special dishes and meals meant to be shared. Food can unify people in other ways too. A remarkable example of that is in the life of Leah Chase, the legendary queen of Creole cuisine. 

Leah Chase, who passed away on June 2, 2019 at age 96, was a Creole chef and promoter of civil rights. She used her Creole restaurant, Dookie Chase, and her cooking talents to create the first fine dining restaurant for black customers in New Orleans. She broke segregation laws by seating blacks and whites in the same dining room and she fed the main players in the civil rights movement as well as tourists, musicians, athletes, and presidents.  

Creole (the food) is a blend of the various cultures of Louisiana (primarily the city of New Orleans), which includes French, Italian, Spanish, African, German, Caribbean, Native American, and Portuguese. Creole dishes have names that are hard to forget (gumbo, jambalaya, dirty rice, for example) and I’m happy to give them all a try. 

Leah Chase believed in the power of food to change a day, a city, and make people feel good. 

I'm still working on it

I have a helpful little phrase you can use when dining in restaurants in the U.S.

When you’re near the end of a meal, perhaps finishing your entree, your server might ask if he/she can take your plate or if you would like a box to take leftovers home (a doggie bag). If you are still eating, simply say, “I’m still working on it.” This is an informal way to tell your server that you haven’t finished eating and you don't want your plate removed yet. (Conversely, your server might ask you first, “Are you still working on that?”)


I don’t think eating is work at all but “I’m still working on it” is something we say in this type of situation. Of course you can always be literal and formal and tell your server that you haven’t finished eating, or that you’re still eating, but using the idiom will have you speaking like a local.

American kitsch: drive-in restaurants

There is a drive-in restaurant near my home called The Kiltie. It operates only during the summer season and is a rare type of restaurant in the USA, mainly because it’s nostalgic, perhaps even a dinosaur (something that is outdated or has become obsolete because of failure to adapt to changing circumstances).

At a drive-in restaurant, customers park their vehicles and are served by carhops (waitresses or waiters) who walk out to the cars to take food orders (some carhops do this on roller skates). The food is brought out on aluminum trays and clipped onto car windows. Drive-in menus normally consist of burgers, fries, sodas, and ice cream, and diners remain parked while they eat.

Don’t be mistaken to think that a drive-in restaurant is a drive-through restaurant. A drive-through restaurant doesn’t encourage diners to linger in their cars to eat and they aren’t old or nostalgic in any way. They operate to keep cars moving from the ordering window to the pay and pick-up window, where customers drive away and take their food with them.

Drive-ins are much more fun. The Kiltie, for example, was built by a Scottish businessman in the late 1940s and it hasn’t changed very much over the years. The carhops still wear plaid skirts (a kilt is a Scottish skirt), the menu is the same, and the ambience takes you back to the 1950s and 60s when drive-ins were at their height of popularity. That was a time when more people owned cars and gasoline prices were low so people were encouraged to drive and enjoy the roads.

If you visit the USA, I encourage you to find a drive-in restaurant to truly enjoy a nostalgic American experience.