Known as the “Father of Fried Chicken,” Chez Helene’s Austin Leslie was an innovative chef.
“Chez Helene’s style was set before the time when crispy coatings came into vogue for fried chicken,” New Orleans Menu states. “Chez Helene’s chicken was greaseless and far from soggy, but the crust was light and thin, never crunchy. What made the chicken good was the flavor of the seasonings in the coating, which was both spicy and herbal.”
Leslie’s other famous dishes included gumbo, smothered cabbage with pigtails, Trout Marguery and Oysters Rockefeller. “The menu was large,” New Orleans Menu states, “and many of the dishes on it seemed more appropriate for a gourmet French-Creole establishment in the Quarter than the neighborhood place that Chez Helene was.”
Born in New Orleans in 1934, Leslie worked at a department store restaurant before he became the chef at his aunt’s new restaurant Chez Helene in 1964.
According to a 2023 Gambit article, restaurant critic Richard Collin helped put the restaurant on the map in 1970 when he called it “one of the best restaurants in New Orleans” with “consistently excellent…soul food at its proud and distinguished best.”
When his aunt, Helen Pollock, retired in 1975, Leslie bought the N. Robertson Street restaurant.
“His food, combined with his outgoing personality, mutton chop sideburns and trademark white captain’s hat, became well-known nationwide,” Gambit states. “In 1987, Leslie and Chez Helene even inspired the critically acclaimed CBS television series, ‘Frank’s Place.’”
Leslie closed Chez Helene in 1994. Then he toured Europe, wrote a cookbook and became the chef at Jacques-Imo’s. He was the chef at Pampy’s Creole Kitchen when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.
Leslie, trapped in his attic for two days, had to be rescued from his roof. He was taken to Atlanta where he died from a heart attack in October 2005. He was 71.
For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.
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