Leah Chase

I've got loads of information about all the animation and everything like that.

Um, however, when they went to New Orleans, Louisiana, to do their research, uh, they met a restaurateur called Leah Chase, who was in... who inspired, uh, Tiana.

And Clements has stated, and I've got a quote, "There's a woman in New Orleans named Leah Chase who was a waitress and ultimately opened a restaurant with her husband.

We met her, and we talked with her, and she went to kind of into a story, her philosophy about food, which is a big element of the movie."

Wow, okay.

But he, they mentored me, and they set me up to be ready for France.

And, uh, and b- but, a- and then Leah Chase, like I had Charlie Trotter on one side, and then Leah Chase, um, rest in peace.

She came up to New York and always like, "You have to really..." She really p- pushed the Black side of me in a way that I fully wasn't ready for as a 25-year-old to understand.

She was like, "During the civil rights movement, we did this.

Well, what we do is we work with them and they'll say we want flora and fauna or we want the box to disappear like a trompe l'oeil, things like that.

Or they want musicians or near the restaurant, Leah Chase, for instance.

I was just going to ask

about that one, yeah.

They have a different vibe, so they want different artwork.

And we really try to make it about the neighborhood and help them do what they want on the boxes.

Yeah, the one we're referring to right outside of Dookie Chase Restaurant on Orleans, there's a box with Chef Leah Chase's image on it.

Right.

It was important for me to connect the dots that Black excellence when it comes to food needs to be documented.

And there needs to be hats off to the incredible legacy of what Black chefs have done before us to set up this moment, right? You have, you know, even from David Thomas Jefferson's time, the, you know, the black chefs that he had going up to miss Leah chase, but you know, ran her restaurant.

You could take still going on in New Orleans for 70 years.

You know what I

I don't know what that is.

I'm just going to let you know.

I cook it just like Leah Chase does.

I put it all in the pot.