John Folse

John Folse (born July 1946, St. James Parish, Louisiana, on the German Coast of the Mississippi River) is a Louisiana chef and restaurant owner, and a leading authority on Cajun and Creole cuisine and culture. His philosophy of life is summed up in the quote, “Risk is the tariff paid to leave the shores of predictable misery. The best fruit is not on the trunk of a tree; it’s on the limb.”

In 1978, Folse opened Lafitte’s Landing Restaurant in the historic Viala Plantation House in Donaldsonville in Ascension Parish south of Baton Rouge.

He introduced Louisiana’s indigenous cuisine to Japan in 1985, Beijing in 1986 and Hong Kong and Paris in 1987. In 1988, Folse made international headlines with the opening of “Lafitte’s Landing East” in Moscow during the Presidential Summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1989, Folse was the first non-Italian chef to create the Vatican State Dinner in Rome. Promotional restaurants also included London in 1991 and 1993, Bogotá in 1991, Taipei in 1992 and 1994 and Seoul in 1994. In 1988, the Sales and Marketing Executives of Greater Baton Rouge named Folse “Marketer of the Year” and the Louisiana Legislature gave him the title of "Louisiana’s Culinary Ambassador to the World.”