She Was Famous For Sharing Her Recipes For Louisiana’s Most Popular Creole Dishes
I believe that the food found in New Orleans, Louisiana, is some of the most exquisite-tasting food you’ll ever have the pleasure of eating.
One woman was famous for sharing her recipes for Louisiana’s most popular Creole dishes and made history along the way.
Lena Richard was a chef, restaurateur, and television personality best known for her delicious Creole cooking and was considered the “Martha Stewart of New Orleans.”
Born in Louisiana in 1892, Lena began her journey with food by assisting her mother and aunt in the kitchen while they worked as domestic help for the wealthy Vairin family in New Orleans.
The lady of the household, Alice Vairin, noticed how talented young Lena was in the kitchen and would let her cook on her own for the family once a week.
Once she graduated high school, the Vairins decided to hire Lena as a full-time cook and even sent her off to study at the well-known Fannie Farmer cooking school in Boston. She was the only black woman learning there at the time.
She became a valuable peer in her classes, with many other students seeking her help with some classic Southern dishes.
In 1914, she married Percival Richard, and they had a daughter named Marie. When she returned to New Orleans at 26 in 1918, she opened her own catering business.
Lena started becoming quite successful and opened other cooking-related businesses, including a cooking school she opened with her daughter in New Orleans in 1937. It was an especially safe space for black students, training them to be prepared to try and make a name for themselves in such a prejudiced world.
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Her career took a strong turn in 1939 when she self-published over 350 of her recipes in a cookbook she titled Lena Richard’s Cook Book. One year later, the renowned publisher Houghton-Mifflin reissued her book and titled it New Orleans Cook Book.
Lena became the first African American to publish a cookbook full of New Orleans Creole dishes.
The cookbook quickly became a best-seller, sending Lena on promotional tours to places like New York City and putting her name in major publications like The New York Times and The Times Herald Tribune.
People started falling in love with Lena and her food, and she’d even get booked to host private cooking lessons.
Lena returned to New Orleans in 1941 and opened her own restaurant, Lena’s Eatery. The restaurant was open to people from all walks of life, no matter their skin color.
Soon after, she was invited to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia to cook at the Travis House, to cook for military personnel and dignitaries.
She cooked there for two years before returning home to New Orleans in 1945.
In 1949, she opened another restaurant in New Orleans, Lena Richard’s Gumbo House. It was one of few fine dining restaurants owned by a black woman in the city, and it fed people some delicious food.
That same year, Lena continued to make history. New Orleans’ first television station, WDSU, invited her to host her own cooking show! Her show, Lena Richard’s New Orleans Cook Book, aired twice a week.
It was made up of 30-minute episodes where Lena would show audience members how to cook recipes from her cookbook alongside her assistant, Marie Matthews, making them the first African-Americans to host a cooking show.
Sadly, Lena passed away suddenly the following year. She died at the age of 58.
Lena’s heart, soul, and food still live on through her recipes and impact on New Orleans cooks today.
For instance, Chef Dee Lavigne, the first Black woman to open a culinary school in New Orleans in 80 years, credits Lena for pushing her to follow her dreams.
“I am beyond impressed with what she’s done in her career and the fact she laid the path for me, over 80 years ago, to be standing right here in my own cooking school, it’s all thanks to her,” Dee told WDSU.
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