Can you tell me about the food, and what makes the food here so special?$$Well because, because I do most of the food myself. I love it, and I love to--I live and breathe food. I, I like to work with food, and I learned one thing--that you cook what you're all about; I could make any kind of cream sauce you want, any kinda--but is that me? People don't come here for that; they come here for me, for what my culture's all about, like stewed okra, string beans, gumbos, beans and rice if you will, or shrimp creole--that kind of thing; they don't look for all the other trendy things, they come here to get a good meal and a good--and when they tell you, "That's just like my grandma," I love it because I know I've done well; if I can cook as good as your grandmother, I have done well. So I try to do that all the time, and you stretch out and do different things at different times, and try different things, but basically, you stay with what you are, and that's, and that's what it's all about. The people in New Orleans [Louisiana], other restaurant owners in New Orleans have been good to me, and that's one thing you will find in New Orleans that you may not find anywhere else--that chefs kinda work together; they work with you, they--if you ask them--I mean if you go to Emeril [Lagasse]'s and you say, "Well, where can I get this?" He'll say, "Well, you go to Leah for that," or I'll tell you, "You go to Paul Prudhomme for that." Like people come here, "Can you blacken me some fish?" "No. I'm not blackenin' anything; I'm the only black thing in my kitchen, I'm not doin' any blackened fish; that's not what I'm all about; Paul does that, that's his thing, you go to Paul to get that." And that--and that's what you do. And people have been real--the chefs have been extraordinary to me; really, really good to me because I'm not certified, I'm not formally trained like they are, but they include me in everything, and we work together, and I learn from them, and it's fun.$Yeah, okay. And this place has another significance in addition to the food and the ambience; it's been a place where black people have met to plan and develop (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous)--Well, because you see--as I said, we've been here 60--what--62, almost 63 years, and it was one place where people met even in segregation days when it was really illegal for blacks and white to congregate in public together anywhere; that was truly illegal. Well, here, if the politicians had to meet black people, this is where they had to meet 'em unless they would go in somebody's church, but this is where they had to meet them here. A lotta things--people come here and get things started and have meetings and go on because it was--and it still is, they still do that; they still come here. If they wanna meet with people, they come and meet over lunch or dinner or somethin' like that.$$Yeah, we heard a couple of days ago that SNCC used to meet here, and CORE was formed here, I think. CORE was formed right here at Dooky Chase.$$Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, because we had a woman workin' for us--Virgie [Castle], and Virgie was from Tennessee, but her daughter was big in the Civil Rights Movement; they have a street named after her--Oretha Castle Haley, and Oretha was big in the civil rights movement, and Virgie was an exceptional woman; why I say that, because Virgie--Virgie wasn't like me--she wasn't like a Leah, you know, she was supportive of what they were doin'; she didn't understand it, like none of us understood what the heck they're doin'; they in the streets, they paradin' in the streets, they, they sitting down, they're bein' dragged off to jail--you kinda didn't understand why, or you didn't understand was it worth this. But Virgie was always supportive of that, and she lived around the corner; I think they tryin' to make her house a historic space, and they should because everybody was there--James Baldwin--they would go there and then come here to eat. Everybody either slept at Virgie's house--I know took a bath there 'cause when they'd come outta jail I'd say, "Ayyy, go to Virgie's; go take a bath and come back here" (laughter). "You mean you gonna put me out?" I say, "Go take a bath at Virgie's and come back here, and I'll feed you" (laughter). So that was then. But she was very supportive of what her children were doing. As I said, she maybe didn't--she didn't understand, but she wasn't anti-anything, and it was hard for her because police were all around her house all the time; it was just hard, it was really hard for her.$$This is Virgie--what's her last name?$$Castle.$$Castle--Virgie Castle.$$Mm-hmm (ph.). And her daughter was Oretha Castle$$Could you spell that?$$Oretha, O-R-E-T-H-A.$$And Virgie?$$V-I-R-G-I-E.$$And Castle?$$C-A-S-T-L-E. And Oretha married a man name--[Richard] Haley was his last name. What was his first name? I, I just don't remember, but he was another bright man, really brilliant man, and did a lot of work, and was very supportive of his wife in her civil rights actions and what she did. And you know, we used to be--like Thurgood Marshall would come through here and he was workin' with the NAACP; in my age, that's what people were doing; we gonna work in the system, we gonna work this way with the NA--but you realize that that was so slow; we would still be today tryin' to get it done. Sometimes you have to take drastic moves, just go at it, and that's what those young people did--they just took those drastic moves and run it. Sometimes it was wrong moves, but that's okay; you, you had to get it done in some ways, and they were able to get it done--that we would've not been able to get it done workin' the slow system we were workin' at, you know? It was not--you know, they were not gonna--we were not gonna make anybody understand where we were coming from. Now, I think we could go a different route; I think the job of the NAACP now--I think it's a pity we still need it; it's just a pity that we still need the NAACP, Urban League and all those kinds of organizations. But now, it should be an educational thing--teach people how to vote, how to vote for the right people, how to vote not necessarily for your friend, but for the man who's gonna move everything a step higher, for the man who's gonna move the country, for the man who's gonna move your city and involve you and involve everybody, and that, that's their job today. I think it should be a lot on education and how we ought to go about thing.