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You are here: Home / How Do You Red Bean? / LEON “KID CHOCOLATE” BROWN: How Do You Red Bean?

LEON “KID CHOCOLATE” BROWN: How Do You Red Bean?

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Table of Contents

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  • What’s your earliest memory of eating red beans and rice? Who made it, and what made it special?
  • Do you cook red beans and rice yourself, or do you leave it to someone else?
  • When you think of the perfect bowl of red beans and rice, what has to be in there? Any secret ingredients or special techniques?
  • If you could have red beans and rice with anyone—past or present—who would it be, and why?
  • How do you think the tradition of red beans and rice reflects the culture and community around it?
  • What’s the best part of sharing a big pot of red beans and rice with friends or family?
  • What does red beans and rice mean to you?
  • Where is your favorite spot in New Orleans?
  • What is your favorite comfort food – your go-to meal?
  • Did you have any projects that you’d like to pass along?
Leon "Kid Chocolate" Brown is sitting down.

{from Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown’s Facebook page]

Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown was born and raised in New Orleans. He picked up the trumpet in a way that could only happen in a New Orleans family home—on a visit to his maw-maw and pop’s house when he was nine, he came across an old clarinet and a cornet tucked away. His mother decided that whichever one was cheaper to fix would be the one he’d learn to play. The cornet won, and with it, a lifelong journey in music began.

By the age of fifteen, Brown was already touring internationally, bringing the sound of New Orleans to stages far beyond the city limits.

He studied at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and later at the University of New Orleans. As much as he’s known for his performance career, Brown is also a respected and sought-after music educator. He works with programs like the Trombone Shorty Foundation, Trombone Shorty Music Academy, and the Don Jamison Heritage School of Music, mentoring the next generation and helping to keep New Orleans’ musical traditions alive and thriving.

Over the years, Brown has earned a reputation as a deeply versatile performer, crossing genres with ease. He’s recorded and toured with artists across jazz, soul, R&B, and pop—including Irvin Mayfield, Jill Scott, and Nicholas Payton. He was part of the Grammy-winning New Orleans Jazz Orchestra in 2010 and has also received a Latin Billboard Award. His performances have taken him to major venues and festivals around the world.

Television audiences may know his sound from HBO’s Treme, where he provided the trumpet work for the character Delmond Lambreaux. Whether on screen or on stage, his music reflects the city that raised him—resilient, soulful, and full of life.

Today, Brown leads his own band, Kid Chocolate and Free P.O.C., and performs with the Players Ella & Louis Tribute Band. His playing brings together the heart of tradition with the freedom of innovation, drawing from second lines, modern jazz, R&B, and more.

Whether performing or teaching, Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown continues to carry the spirit of New Orleans music forward with skill, soul, and deep dedication.

Leon "Kid Chocolate" Brown plays the trumpet on stage in New Orleans.

{from Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown’s Facebook page]

What’s your earliest memory of eating red beans and rice? Who made it, and what made it special?

I remember eating them growing up. My earliest memory of that, I had to be at least eight or nine years old because both of my youngest siblings were there, and the youngest was old enough to feed herself. I remember my Mama cooking red beans and rice quite often. White beans, Lima beans, pork & beans, and black eyed peas for New Year’s Day, too. And sometimes my Daddy cooked them too.

It could’ve been Mondays, it could’ve been whenever it was the easiest meal to make, I don’t know, but I know it was often because they cooked them so much and I got so tired of eating beans and rice to the point that I regularly vowed when I grew up and moved out, I would never eat beans again! Looking back on it, however, those were special times because we were a family who sat down at the dinner table and ate together and talked about stuff and joked around as a family, every night for the most part. A lot of my friends didn’t grow up in households like this; they would get their food and eat in front of the TV or in their bedrooms. I was a little bit jealous, but I definitely see the benefit in how my parents raised us. That’s special to me. I cherish it now.

Do you cook red beans and rice yourself, or do you leave it to someone else?

I could not tell you the last time I put something in a pot or pan and turned the fire on to cook anything! For one, my wife is a chef and she loves to cook. I don’t have a love or a liking for cooking food myself. I used to be addicted to eating, but I have a different relationship with food now. Second, I don’t eat a lot of food cooked on the stove. Most of the food I eat is cooked by the sun. Fresh fruit and vegetables make up the most of my food.

My wife did teach me how to make red beans a few years ago, and they came out really good. Most of the time, when my wife cooks em she’ll make a small pot of vegan beans on the side for me and anybody else who doesn’t feel like eating the animal meat. She’s really serious in the kitchen.

When you think of the perfect bowl of red beans and rice, what has to be in there? Any secret ingredients or special techniques?

Hot sauce! I used to like Tabasco growing up, but now I’m a man. I like the hottest hot sauce I can get my hands on.

If you could have red beans and rice with anyone—past or present—who would it be, and why?

I have two. I would like to have red beans and rice with the first of my European ancestors to set foot on what is now American Soil, and the last of my indigenous American ancestors before the Europeans set foot on American soil. I grew up believing what I had always been told, and that was that I was an African-American. So as an adult and a person on a Journey to “find myself”, I started doing my genealogy about 10 years ago to find my African ancestors. I have yet to find any African ancestors or any implication that any of them are African, yet I look the way that I look.

My mama and all of her sisters look like Pocahontas. My daddy on all of his old pictures, looks like those pictures of the Indians you see with the Afros. I’ve got nothing against Africans, and we do look similar, but we are not the same. It’s obvious. I’m speaking for me and my kin because I’ve seen the evidence, but I’m sure everybody’s story is going to have some variation, and some people will find that they are actually of African descent. And it’s also crazy to me that we should be expected to believe the common narrative of our history, when it’s given to us by the same people and system who Enslaved us.

I would really just like to put some faces along with the names in my family tree. I’ve gotten back as far as the late 1400’s so I know what I am and what I’m not, but I’d be interested to see which of my physical characteristics came from which ancestors. I have some ancestors from the Yucatán Peninsula. Not so far from the Yucatán Peninsula is a place called Brazil, where they have a dish called feijoada. It’s the same as our traditional red beans and rice. Blew my mind the first time I came across it in Brazil. But maybe me and my ancestor could chow down on some of this while we look at each other and try to figure out how to communicate because I’m almost positive they didn’t speak English, and I know that I don’t speak the language that they spoke. ha ha ha ha

How do you think the tradition of red beans and rice reflects the culture and community around it?

Growing up as a young person, we really stuck close to home and close to Family. Very few outside friends other than school and church, but as an adult, once I started moving around the city on my own, playing music and otherwise, is when I started to see the tradition of red beans and rice on Mondays. I never really looked into the reason why the tradition started, but I would see it offered at bars as lagniappe to get more customers to come in to buy drinks. God knows some of those people, I’m absolutely certain, would spend money on alcohol before they spend money on food, so I can see how it’s definitely an inexpensive way to feed some of the community and get people to come together without breaking your bank account.
I’d say the culture is reflected in the way that each person who makes beans has their own special way of making them just like everybody has their own way of making gumbo just like every Indian gang has their own way of making their suits just like each individual in each tribe has their own little special thing that makes their suit unique from the next person in their gang’s suit just like people from each neighborhood, have a certain aesthetic and dialect and temperament, just like each individual in the neighborhood falls somewhere on the spectrum of the aesthetic and dialect and temperament of the whole of the neighborhood. The whole red beans and rice tradition is just a small reminder of the truth. A small reminder of the universal law of correspondence: as above, so below, as below so above, as within so without, as without so within.

What’s the best part of sharing a big pot of red beans and rice with friends or family?

To me, the best part of sharing a pot of red beans and rice with friends and family is also the part that I find the most entertaining and hilarious. Usually, when people show up, before their plate is served, they like to announce how they like their red beans and rice cooked and what they like in it, whether it’s pigtails or smoked turkey or ham hocks or whatever. And they like to talk about how they make their red beans and rice, and they like to brag about how much people love their red beans and rice and all of that. It’s just a big buildup til that smoking plate of red beans and rice gets placed in front of them.  But then, after they eat and finish the plate and maybe a second plate and maybe even the third plate(!), all they’re gonna talk about now is how good THOSE beans were. Now they’re asking for the recipe or whatever lol.  I just find that kind of funny. But maybe I’m just weird like that haha.

What does red beans and rice mean to you?

Other than all of the symbolic meanings that I’ve talked about earlier, personally, as an Artist and a Songwriter, “Red beans” is very special, and New Orleans is lucky to share the space with it because there are very few words that actually rhyme with New Orleans. There are so many songs where songwriters wrote “New Orleens” instead of “New Or-Lens”.
That’s why we have so many songs that talk about collard greens and land of dreams and historic scenes and beauty Queens, but most of all… red beans, because it’s just an easy to think of rhyme and it just so happens to be a great dish.

Where is your favorite spot in New Orleans?

My favorite spot in New Orleans, other than my house, I would have to say, is probably the lakefront. I like to go out there and meditate and feed the birds and go fishing with Dad, my son, and nephews, or even just sit and feel the wind blow and watch the water and watch the wildlife and just watch, listen, and feel nature. For me, it’s like tapping back into the source sometimes.

What is your favorite comfort food – your go-to meal?

I stopped eating food for comfort probably 10 to 15 years ago. My go-to foods are just about anything whole. I recently discovered Envy apples. I really like those.

Did you have any projects that you’d like to pass along?

Sure, I have a fairly new superband that I put together called “The Free P.O.C.”. POC stands for anything other than people of color because I find that offensive, so I decided to claim the word and repurpose it.

The band features, Khris Royal (sax & vocal) the musical director for big Freida and leader of his own band Dark Matter, Floyd Gray from the Shamarr Allen band, Kieko Komaki from the late Marva Wright Band, June Yamagishi from the Wild Magnolias and Papa Gros Funk, Max Bronstein from Slugger and Erica Falls Band, Terrence Houston from Slugger and The George Porter Band, my Son Deuce Brown from my bands and Trumpet Mafia, Mike Bass Bailey from his own band The Groove System and formerly of the Trombone Shorty & Orleans Ave., Stephan Walker from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and his own bands Swinging In New Orleans and the Big Easy Brass Walkers.

We’ve been holding down a residency at D.B.A. on Frenchman st. On Tuesday nights for about a year and a half now. We get plenty of folk from out of town, and it’d be great to see more local faces in there every week.


To stay up to date with the latest information on Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown, follow him online:

  • Website: https://direct.me/dbakidchocolate
  • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DBAKidchocolate/about
  • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dbakidchocolate

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Eric Olsson from RedBeansAndEric.com
Red Beans and Eric

Eric Olsson is the food blogger of RedBeansAndEric.com. He publishes new recipes and interviews weekly. He has developed recipes and written articles for the famous Camellia brand in New Orleans, Louisiana. He has been mentioned in Louisiana Cookin‘ magazine and has had recipes featured in Taste of Home magazine – with his Creole Turkey recipe being runner up in their annual Thanksgiving recipe contest. He lives outside of Detroit, Michigan, with his wife and four children.

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