Chef Lena Richard

Unsung History

Over a decade before Julia Child’s The French Chef appeared on TV, a Black woman chef hosted her own, very popular cooking show on WDSU-TV in New Orleans. At a time when families were just beginning to own televisions, Chef Lena Richard’s show was so popular that it aired twice a week.

Richard started working as a cook as a teenager for the wealthy Vairin family who employed her mom as a domestic servant. When their cook left, Alice Vairin gave Richard a trial run as cook and was so impressed that she hired her on the spot. Vairin later sent Richard to cooking schools, first locally and then at the prestigious eight-week Fannie Farmer Cooking School in Boston.

In addition to her television show, Richard’s storied career included launching a catering business; stints as head chef at the Bird and Bottle Inn in Garrison, New York, and the Travis House Restaurant and Inn, in Colonial Williamsburg; two of her own restaurants in New Orleans, Lena’s Eatery and Lena Richard’s Gumbo House; a cooking school; a frozen food business; and a best-selling Creole cookbook, New Orleans Cookbook.

Joining me to help us learn more about Chef Lena Richard are two guests: Chef Dee Lavigne of New Orleans, owner of Deelightful Cupcakes and Assistant Production Producer for the Sunday Morning News Food Segment on WWL-TV4; and Dr. Ashley Rose Young, Historian of the American Food History Project at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode images Courtesy of Newcomb Archive, Vorhoff Library Special Collections, Tulane University.

Sources:

• “Meet Lena Richard, the Celebrity Chef Who Broke Barriers in the Jim Crow South,” by Lily Katzman, Smithsonian Magazine, June 12, 2020
• “The Story of Lena Richard,” by Sarah Nerney, Colonial Williamsburg, August 22, 2020.
• “Creole Cuisine: Lena Richard,” Google Arts & Culture, based on the exhibit in the Southern Food and Beverage Museum.
• “Learning from the best: Lena Richard’s Creole Cookbook,” Rachael Garder-Stephen, Adam Matthew: A SAGE Publishing Company Blog, March 12, 2021.
• “America's Unknown Celebrity Chef,” Sidedoor Podcast, June 9, 2020.

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