The James Beard Foundation has bestowed its 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award on iconic chef, restaurateur and TV personality Leah Chase.

Leah and Dooky Chase welcome President George W. Bush to Dooky Chase’s in April fo 2008. Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.

Chase, the 93-year-old founder of famed New Orleans restaurant Dooky Chase’s, pioneered creole cooking and helped popularize a number of local dishes. While Dooky Chase’s developed a reputation for its excellent food, it was also a frequent meeting spot for activists during the Civil Rights Movement. Additionally, Chase is a notable patron of the arts, and her restaurant’s collection of African-American art is considered one of New Orleans’ finest.

According to the James Beard Foundation, their Lifetime Achievement Award is “bestowed upon a person in the industry whose lifetime body of work has had a positive and long-lasting impact on the way we eat, cook, and think about food in America.”

A press release from the organization reads:

Known as the “Queen of Creole Cuisine,” Leah Chase is a chef, restaurateur, and TV personality from New Orleans. In 1946 she married Edgar “Dooky” Chase Jr., and together they worked in his parents’ restaurant. With a shared vision they transformed Dooky Chase’s, which was once a sandwich shop, barroom, lottery ticket outlet, and neighborhood gathering place, into a sit-down restaurant wrapped within the cultural environment of Creole cooking, African-American art, and jazz. In a town deeply divided by segregation, Dooky Chase’s Restaurant, which is still open today, was one of the only public places in New Orleans where mixed race groups could meet to discuss strategy for the local Civil Rights Movement. The restaurant was the meeting ground for black voter registration campaign organizers, the NAACP, political activists, and countless others, and Leah Chase cooked for them all. Chase’s original dishes would help pioneer the Creole food movement, and her recipes for dishes like gumbo, jambalaya, and fried chicken have gone on to become kitchen staples. Chase is also a patron of the arts, and her collection — displayed on the walls of her restaurant — was at one time considered New Orleans’s best collection of African-American art. As a writer of two cookbooks and winner of countless food and humanitarian awards, Chase was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America in 2010.

“I am overwhelmed to receive such a prestigious award,” said Chase. “I never dreamt of receiving such an award for doing what I love to do: cook and serve others.”