NSU receives ‘go-ahead’ for new John Folse cooking school

The State Bond Commission cleared the way for the planning and design of the new John Folse Culinary Institute, providing the funding to Nicholls State University.

The new facility will be built at the corner of La. Highway 1 and Bowie Road, according to university officials.

“After so many years of waiting, I could not have been more excited when hearing of the State Bond Commission’s approval of the $700,000 necessary for the planning and design of our institute’s new culinary arts building,” Chef John Folse, the institute’s namesake and chairman of the board of advisors, said in a written statement.

“With the rapid growth of enrollment in the culinary program at Nicholls, the timing of this initiative could not have been better. We are simply out of space.”

The institute is currently housed in Gouaux Hall on the Nicholls campus, with more than 300 students enrolled. They hail from 11 states and two countries, officials report.

The program offers diverse career paths in food and beverage management, single-unit restaurants, chain restaurants, offshore catering, culinary research, teaching, culinary nutrition, hotel and casino food-service operations and the like.

According to Nicholls’ website, the college graduates, on average, 33 students yearly. At the outset of this semester, those numbers included more than 230 bachelors’ degrees and more than 90 associates’ degrees. Seventy-one percent of the institute’s graduates are part of the Louisiana workforce, the website reports.

Chef Randy Cheramie, executive director of the institute, said the new facility will “become the regional epicenter for culinary arts training, as well as [provide] opportunities for teaching the wider community what we do, and who we are.”

“Our approach to culinary arts is scholarly as well as hands-on, with a specialized commitment to teaching the history and traditions of Cajun and Creole cuisine, the most unique and important regional cuisine in America,” Cheramie said in the statement. “We live in a mecca of great food, so this institute is certainly vital to our region. It is an important cultural initiative, and we are only limited by our imagination. If not us, then who?”