Photos by Lucie Monk Carter
Leah’s Pralines reigns as the oldest, continually operating family-owned praline shop in the competitive confines of the French Quarter. Originally called Cook’s Confections after its founder, Cecil Cook, the shop opened on South Rampart Street in 1933, though some references date the business back to 1925. In 1944, Cook sold his praline company, which he had relocated to 714 St. Louis Street, to Leah and Robert Johnson. The Johnsons, a fashion model and a financial consultant, respectively, renamed the business Leah’s Southern Confections and eventually Leah’s Pralines.
The purchase of the business included the candy shop’s original recipes, all of which are still followed today; most of the candy-making equipment and fixtures detailed in the seventy-two-year-old bill of sale are still in daily use, too. Set against the background of the warm butter cream-hued walls in both the kitchen and retail shop are the listed “fancy” cypress table, American Family spring scale, three W.M. Crane & Company Vulcan Candy stoves (two bearing the number 3526, one the number 526), two marble slab-topped tables, three (now antique) chairs, one Howe platform scale bearing the number 30-M-2, a Toledo Computing Scale bearing the number 2504, one Hobart Candy Mixer with the motor bearing the number 483160-R, and four copper kettles.
Last summer the SoFAB Culinary Heritage Register tapped Leah’s Pralines to be its eighth listing. “Studying institutions like Leah’s help us to understand when, where, and how American food and beverage practices developed,” said Elizabeth Williams, president and founder of National Food & Beverage Foundation, a New Orleans-based non-profit formerly known as the SoFAB Institute. “Studying them allows for a more complete understanding of America’s culture and history.”
Gone are the Liq-O-Nier refrigerator box (complete with electrical unit) and three fluorescent light fixtures. Meanwhile, two additional copper kettles have been added to the working collection.
The round-bottomed copper kettles gleam from constant employ in the making of cooked candies, the fragrance of which wafts through the ages and the ever-open door on to St. Louis Street, tempting sidewalk traffic. The view from the picture windows across the front of the shop looks out on the picturesque street and the façade of 176-year-old Antoine’s Restaurant. Both Leah’s and Antoine’s internally illuminated display signs are among a very small handful of such remaining in the French Quarter, where they were outlawed long ago. It’s easy to imagine the decades’ parade of passersby, fashions morphing from those of elegant wasp-waisted-and-cloche-hatted women clutching the arms of zoot-suited gangsters, to big-haired girls in taffeta party dresses with gigantic back bows clinging to the arms of mulleted pop-star wannabes in Members Only jackets, and everything in between and since.
Like the cast of ever-changing characters that have patronized the frozen-in-time shop over the ages, the cast within is fluid. Leah’s niece, Elna Stokes, is the present-day proprietor. She runs the shop with her daughter, Suzie Stokes. “I was brought here before my first memory,” Elna said. “ I saw a picture of me in a little bassinet or something like that set on the counter in the shop. The shop looked about the same as today.”
Images of the day show Leah Johnson, elegant and rail thin, presiding over the front of the shop in haute couture, often wearing a fur coat. One can assume she was not eating, much less stirring, the contents of the copper candy kettles. Like so many New Orleans business owners, Leah Johnson sensed a windfall of wealth—and hard work—was coming with the 1984 World’s Fair. Her niece, Elna, had enjoyed a fulfilling career as a teacher in both Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, and Leah talked her into taking over the family business.
Elna ran Leah’s with her husband, Kenny Stokes, Sr. Together, the couple learned to cook all the recipes, eschewing the hired kitchen help upon whom Leah had relied. In addition to Leah’s traditional crispy Creole-style praline, they added a chewy caramel version as well. Everything was homemade and original.
Elna Stokes’ mettle was tested in 2005 when the federal levees failed following Hurricane Katrina. Sales were crushed by seventy-five percent and remained down for three years. Just as business was climbing back, the Great Recession took hold. To survive, she revamped the company’s website to drive more Internet orders, updated her brochures, and relied on her son, Kenneth Stokes, Jr., who, having grown up in the shop, stepped in to work for no pay to get his mother through the hard times. “There are some things in your life that you love more than anything,” she said. “First of all, you love your children, and next I love the shop. It has been a constant in my life since I was 12,” Elna said. “You have to tighten your belt. You can’t live the way you may have been accustomed to living. Pray hard and work hard. Sometimes that’s all there is.”
Seven years ago, Tyrone Stevenson joined Leah’s Praline’s as the company’s lead candy maker, bringing with him the spirit and enthusiasm of his Mardi Gras Indian alter-ego, that of Big Chief Pie of the Monogram Hunters. Leah’s is a stop on several culinary tours not just for its rich history and generous samples but also for the lavish photos of Big Chief Pie in full regalia adorning the shop’s brick walls. “He’s become as much a part of this place as the candy he makes,” Elna said. It was under Stevenson’s tutelage that the momentous decision was made five years ago to create a new product, bacon pecan brittle. The result, an instant success, is savory, sweet, and thoroughly addicting.
With the shop back on solid footing, Kenneth Jr., made the decision to relocate to his wife’s native Boston. His sister, Suzie, who, like him, grew up working the shop at Leah’s, knew it was time to apply her skills to the family business. Following graduation from Loyola she had worked in graphic design and marketing in New York and had a culinary degree from Delgado that gave her both front- and back-of-the-house knowledge in running a culinary-oriented business.
Gifted with the same bright, dancing, pale eyes as her mother and great aunt, Suzie officially joined the family business in 2014, the year Martha Stewart named Leah’s Pralines an American Food Finalist. Suzie has focused on growing Leah’s Internet and social media presence while refining the elegance and heritage that set the business apart from its competitors. Her strategy is working. The company fulfilled more holiday orders this past season than ever before in its history.
Leah’s Pralines 714 St. Louis Street New Orleans, La. (504) 523-5662 leahspralines.com
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