Sean Gasser
“Louisiana’s Culinary Ambassador to the World” Chef John Folse at his Baton Rouge venue White Oak Estate and Gardens.
Forty-five years since opening Lafitte’s Landing at Viala Plantation, the restaurant that launched his culinary empire and international reputation, Chef John Folse still brings it all back to his childhood experience growing up in a small bayou town in St. James Parish. The chef, food historian, television personality, and culture bearer was recently named the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities 2023 Humanist of the Year. When asked what being a “humanist” means to him, he insists it’s, “just the way I was raised.”
Growing up with six siblings, Folse and his family lived off the land, bayou-to-table. His father would leave for a few months at a time, returning with the spoils of extended hunting trips. All the kids were taught to hunt and fish, something they did daily. In his 2008 cookbook, After the Hunt, Folse featured recipes like stuffed muskrat and roasted raccoon with sweet potato sausage and cornbread stuffing, accompanied by a history of the Cajun culture that defined Folse's youth. Animals were eaten nose to tail, roasted, fried, and smothered. Game powered the deeply flavored gumbos, bisques, and chowders Folse learned to cook as a child.
[Get Chef John Folse's take on how to prepare venison, here.]
Since entering Louisiana’s restaurant scene full force nearly half a century ago, Folse has established himself as an advocate for the many distinct cultures that give rise to his cuisine. His first restaurant enterprise thrived for twenty years before the two-hundred-year-old estate was destroyed in a fire in 1998. He then launched an events and catering division in 1999, reopening Lafitte's Landing Restaurant for private events that same year at Bittersweet Plantation, his former residence in historic downtown Donaldsonville.
In the 1980s and ‘90s, the Louisiana Legislature dubbed Folse “Louisiana’s Culinary Ambassador to the World” for his gumbo globe-trotting efforts marketing Lafitte’s. He has cooked étouffée and gumbo across the Asian continent. In 1988, he made headlines in Moscow by serving Louisiana cuisine during the Presidential Summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, and was the first non-Italian chef to create the Vatican State Dinner in Rome. In 2012, he headed the “Spirit of the Gulf” seafood promotion campaign at the London Olympics. The result of these efforts was the firm establishment of Louisiana itself as an international culinary destination.
[Find Chef Folse's recipe for a venison rolled roast here.]
Since 1986, many of Folse’s ventures have been spawned from his Baton Rouge property White Oak Estate and Gardens, where he still centers his operations today—most significantly his events and catering arm of Chef John Folse & Company. In the early 1990s he also established his food manufacturing division. The 68,000 square foot John Folse & Company USDA manufacturing plant in Donaldsonville employs close to four hundred workers, shipping to nine countries and all over the U.S.
In 1989, his status as a celebrity chef firmly established, he formed Chef Folse & Company Publishing—which went on to release several popular Cajun and Creole cookbooks, including the iconic tome After the Hunt: Louisiana’s Authoritative Collection of Wild Game & Game Fish Cookery. The following year, he started hosting his first cooking show, A Taste of Louisiana, produced by Louisiana Public Broadcasting, which would go on to be inducted into the TASTE Hall of Fame in 2021 after thirteen seasons. He has also been a long-beloved personality on WAFB-TV and WVUE-TV FOX 8 for his “Stirrin’ It Up” cooking segment, still airing on Tuesdays and Thursdays straight from Folse’s patio at White Oak.
In addition to his personal brand, Folse has also shared a platform with Chef Rick Tramonto since 2010, opening their joint venture Restaurant R’evolution in New Orleans' Royal Sonesta Hotel in 2012. At once a steakhouse, a modern Italian trattoria, and a polished Creole-Cajun restaurant, R'evolution offers accomplished luxury dining and an impressive wine cellar.
Then, of course, there is the culinary school that bears his name, The John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University in Thibodeaux, the state’s only four-year program, which has served as the training grounds for dozens of Louisiana’s most acclaimed chefs since it opened in 1994.
[Find Chef Folse's recipe for a cane syrup vinaigrette here.]
Never one to sit still for long, Folse is about to pour the first batch of bourbon and rum from his distillery, which he built at White Oak six years ago. The corn-based bourbon and rum made from Louisiana sugarcane have aged in charred oak barrels for the last five years. He’s keeping the spirits in-house for now, mainly to be served at private catering events.
Over the course of his remarkable career, Folse has collected no shortage of accolades and awards—from being named the American Culinary Federation’s “National Chef of the Year” in 1990, to receiving the Southern Foodways Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008, to being inducted into the American Academy of Chefs Culinary Hall of Fame in 2017 (plus many, many more). In the wake of his latest major acknowledgment, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Humanist of the Year Award for 2023, I sat down with him to reflect on the incredible journey that has brought him here.
Sean Gasser
So, how does it feel to be named Humanist of the Year?
It’s just part of a Cajun upbringing. We are a culture of giving and sharing. It’s not about me. It’s who we are as a people in South Louisiana. I grew up in the swamps of Louisiana. I come from a culture of people who always figure out how to get it done. It’s never been a matter of easy, but we are always thinking about how to make something happen. That’s part of our DNA.
What was your childhood like?
I couldn’t imagine a world two miles away from my front porch. It was such a simple, sweet childhood. Everything I was expected to do was right there in that landscape. It was a loving place to grow up. Everything we needed to eat—our shelter, medicine—was right there in the swamps.
Were you always community-minded?
Early on, I realized that the greatest gift we have is the gift of giving. It comes from a simple upbringing. Everybody was dependent on everybody around them. In the early 1950s when the neighborhood came together to do a boucherie, it dawned on me, right then, the importance of neighborhood and family and friends. We support and look after each other, and that felt so good. I’ve seen that it’s not that way in other places. People can be standoffish, not friendly. Here in Louisiana, we share, we help. It’s who we are.
"I grew up in the swamps of Louisiana. I come from a culture of people who always figure out how to get it done. It’s never been a matter of easy, but we are always thinking about how to make something happen. That’s part of our DNA." —Chef John Folse
What are a few highlights of your career so far?
I was lucky to be a chef at a time when the world was opening up in exciting ways. I could interact with other cultures and cuisines. Traveling in the ‘80s and ‘90s gave me a global view of helping and assisting and learning. God has given me a gift, a platform to help others, whether it’s helping a needy family or a community recovering from a hurricane, whatever it is. I was somehow at the right place at the right time with a sharing heart.
What is it that is so special about Louisiana cuisine?
There’s nowhere else in the world where seven nations came together within one hundred years and mingled cultures, ingredients, and cuisines. All those influences combined into a pot that never existed before. We are an experimental culture. We dump everything in and stir. Figuring out what’s going to come out of it as we go along. We’re good at that. Whatever somebody brings to the table, whether it’s a fish from the Gulf or a racoon, we are going to create something delicious.
You often speak of the seven cultures that settled Louisiana. Why is this so important to you?
Without these people and their influences, we wouldn’t have the food we love in South Louisiana. The Native Americans, Spanish, French, Africans, Germans, English, and Italians all influenced the food we eat today.
How has the culinary landscape in Louisiana changed—for better or worse—over the course of your career?
It’s changed tremendously! When I started out back in the 1960s, we learned basic skills through apprenticeship, from cooks working alongside us. In South Louisiana we already had tremendous education in the kitchens of our mothers and grandmothers. But things have changed dramatically. It used to be that here every home was doing variations of the same kind of cooking, the crawfish étouffée, the gumbos. Then the culinary landscape just exploded with television, magazines, the availability of global ingredients. Now everything is available, which changed cooking from grandmother and mother’s apron strings to cooking food from all over the world. If you can follow a recipe, open up your iPad, you can be a creative cook. Even if you’ve never tasted that dish or been to that country yourself.
I can’t think of anything negative that I’ve seen—there will always be people who make bad food, but right now, today, is a great time to be cooking.
Most culinary arts programs are two years. Why does your school offer a four-year degree?
I’m so proud of our four-year program. Many great cooks who just love the kitchen fail because of their inability to manage people and handle finances. We know how to make a roux, but what about all the other aspects of the business? We’ve taken young folks and not only taught them the great cuisines of the world, but how to manage their books, write a menu, train people, and finance the restaurant. If I’d learned these lessons back in 1978, I wouldn’t have had to struggle so much. And I’d be a much wealthier man!
What are you most proud of about your work?
I’m proud of my company and how it continues to diversify. We own it, my wife and I, and we support a lot of people within our communities with jobs. That helps their families. We are an example of “I can”. I love sharing with other people how they can do it too. If you can dream it, you can do it. We have been blessed. Every morning I wake up and think, how can we help? Where is there a need? •
Stay up to date with Chef John Folse's latest activities at White Oak Estate at whiteoakestateandgardens.com.
