JOHN FOLSE
World-renowned Chef & Owner of Chef John Folse & Co.

Born and raised on the river in St. James Parish, Chef John Folse is a Cajun through and through. But no job was too tough for John. At age 9, he was hired by local restaurants to skin frogs for 25-cents each.

Thinking his frog-skinning days were far behind him, John went off to college at Nichols State University. In 1969, he moved to Baton Rouge with the intention of going to work in the chemical industry, but found himself thrust into a culinary whirlwind of a career.

Today, John wears many hats as the owner of numerous restaurants and products, the author of several cookbooks, the host of a couple local television and radio shows and the establisher of the Culinary Institute at Nichols State.

He says if he weren't so busy doing all that, he would probably be polling a gondola in Venice telling stories about New Orleans.

One of his biggest and most interesting accomplishments was the opening of his restaurant in the Soviet Union before communism collapsed. He also worked in China, where he opened a restaurant and walked on the Great Wall of China.

"It's really interesting to see China today in comparison with my stay there in the 80's. Back then, once you stepped off the plane, you were surrounded by 1,000 people trying to see a real live westerner. Now it's commonplace."

As a chef, everyone wants to know what John's "last supper" would look like. "When I was younger, I would have said ice cold Beluga caviar and cold vodka, but now it would have to be a bowl full of my grandmother's gumbo with a scoop of potato salad sitting on the rim."