Chase turned her husband’s family’s restaurant, which was once a lottery ticket and po’boy stand, into one of the defining restaurants of the 20th century. Known as the Queen of Creole Cuisine, chef Leah Chase has been a fixture of the New Orleans restaurant scene since the 1950s. In fact, only months after ending his teaching career, he re-opened his school as the offical home for the African American Chefs Hall of Fame. A friend of the late Edna Lewis, Randall has made it his mission to celebrate the living history of African American chefs. He was the director of food services for the Savannah College of Art and Design for a year before founding Joe Randall’s Cooking School, where he remained until closing the school and semi-retiring in 2016. Lee in Pennsylvania, he moved to Savannah in 1999. Wey is now running a new pop-up in New Orleans, called Saartj, that specifically challenges diners to confront the reality of racially-motivated economic injustice throughout the country.Ĭhef Joe Randall has been a fixture of the Savannah culinary scene since the late ’90s. Nigerian chef Tunde Wey has, until very recently, been traveling around the country serving pop-up meals as part of a series called “Blackness in America.” Over meals of jollof rice and pepper soup, Wey moderated intentionally uncomfortable discussions about what it means to be a person of color in America today.

Some have dedicated their careers to teaching, others are television stars and still more are changing our culinary scene from behind the line. We’ve picked 20 of the most outstanding and influential African-American chefs across the South who we think have had the greatest influence on what we eat today. These chefs are only a few of the most influential African American chefs cooking in the South today. It’s safe to say that the work of chefs Tunde Wey, BJ Dennis and Michael Twitty has changed the way we talk about Southern cooking, and that New Orleans cuisine wouldn’t be the same without Leah Chase.

A Real Southern Cook by Dora Charles