New Orleans Fried Chicken Legend Willie Mae’s Opens Los Angeles Restaurant

New Orleans culinary star Kerry Seaton-Stewart is smiling widely as she walks through her new Los Angeles restaurant, stopping at tables to proudly tell guests that the food served here is a taste of New Orleans.

The opening of Willie Mae’s in Venice on Friday evening was a momentous occasion. This Lincoln Boulevard restaurant is the descendant of the iconic Willie Mae’s Scotch House in New Orleans that Seaton-Stewart’s great-grandmother, Willie Mae Seaton, established in 1957. Willie Mae’s serves what many consider the best fried chicken in America. This chicken is wonderfully juicy, assertively seasoned and properly spicy without blowing out your palate, but what truly sets it apart is the shattering crunch when you bite into it.

Eating the boldly flavored side dishes at Willie Mae’s Venice, including a soul-warming gumbo that Seaton-Stewart has made for years but is serving daily for the first time, is like seeing more vivid shades of your favorite colors. Magnificent butter beans, a vegan dish that’s almost miraculously creamy, are served over rice. Other standout sides include mashed potatoes with gravy, mac-and-cheese and cabbage (which is also vegan, because Seaton-Stewart understands that she’s in LA and wants this restaurant to offer “something for everyone.”)

Seaton-Stewart and her husband, Mike Stewart, have a home in Los Angeles not far from their new restaurant. They still go back to New Orleans frequently, but they are deeply committed to LA, where they also have a Willie Mae’s pickup-and-delivery location at Colony in West LA and a fried chicken sandwich at HiHo Cheeseburger. (HiHo co-founders Lowell Sharron and Jerry Greenberg are part of the Willie Mae’s team in Los Angeles.)

“We get customers from all over the world in New Orleans, and a lot of them come from California,” Seaton-Stewart says. “We were like, maybe the people in California really do want some Willie Mae’s fried chicken.”

They were originally planning to open the full-service Venice restaurant (which also has a kiosk for guests who want a more casual experience or takeout) before the West LA ghost kitchen. But as anybody who’s tried to launch a restaurant in LA this year knows, permitting delays, staffing issues and other challenges often slow down the process. So Seaton-Stewart opened the pickup-and-delivery outpost in September.

“I really wanted full-service, but it just took some time and we got antsy,” she says.

Seaton-Stewart is stoic about it all. Challenges are about perspective. She had to rebuild Willie Mae’s Scotch House in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the restaurant (just months after it received a James Beard Award for America’s Classic Restaurant in the Southern Region), so she knows what it’s like to emerge triumphant after tougher circumstances.

She’s in LA to expand her audience while honoring her past.

“I grew up eating gumbo, and my grandmother taught me how to make gumbo,” Seaton-Stewart says. “It’s just a traditional Creole gumbo. It’s me bringing New Orleans to LA. It’s the taste of New Orleans. That way, I can always think of home. We’re also bringing our Southern hospitality that we have in New Orleans to Los Angeles. We’re very warm and we’re focused on the guest. We definitely are big on service. That’s just as important as the food to us.”