Photo: Elsa Hahne

What brings you here today?

As far as the Andrews family is concerned, cooking runs deep. If music is 100 percent, cooking is 89 percent.

We’re all cooks. My cousin, Glen Andrews, his grandmother started one of the biggest black institutions in New Orleans, Two Sisters, the black one, on Derbigny.

They’re in the East now. And my grandmother had a restaurant on Dumaine and Robertson next to the old funeral home. And Dooky’s is a neighborhood place we’ve been all our life. I started eating here with my uncle Patrick who was a carpenter. But I didn’t come as a child.

The main cook in my family is auntie Deborah and she lived right across the street, so we never had reason to come here.

What are you eating?

I love beets! I’ve been craving beets for a while. And this smothered chicken. They must have started on this chicken maybe six-seven o’clock this morning. M-hm.

Dooky Chase’s Restaurant
2301 Orleans Ave. (504) 821-0600