The John Folse Culinary Institute has a student enrollment of 300 students. Paul Terrebonne, culinary senior from Larose, is one of these 300 and will soon be one of the 33 students that graduate from the Institute each year.Terrebonne chose this particular major primarily due to the influence of his grandmother with whom he used to cook when he was a child. Another deciding factor was the year off Paul took after high school, “I found myself in the kitchen more often than any place else.”
The Culinary Institute requires its students to take a variety of classes so that they experience a little of everything. Terrebonne’s favorite class was taught by Chef Frank Brigsten. Brigsten taught a Louisiana Cajun Creole class during the three semesters that he visited Nicholls. Brigsten has his own restaurant in New Orleans and has won the James Beard Award.
While Cajun Creole is Terrebonne’s favorite class, he said he was really looking forward to taking Bistro, which he is currently enrolled in now, “I was so excited to take Bistro this semester and I knew it would be a lot of work,” says Terrebonne. “Sometimes we do about 40 hours of work in two days.”
While Bistro may be a lot of work, it is not the hardest class Terrebonne has had to take. “French. I hate it! I would study for hours and it was so hard to get a decent grade.”
Speech is another of Terrebonne’s least favorite classes. “I’ve dropped it twice. I’m really not looking forward to taking that class at all.”
French was the most difficult academic class, but Terrebonne said not many culinary classes were quite as challenging. It was the little things that caused the most trouble. “Knife skills has to be the hardest thing,” Terrebonne said. “You can always improve; you can never been too accurate or too quick. It’s a life learning skill.”
In each culinary lab, students usually make multiple dishes. As a result, by your senior year, it is hard to remember them all, “My favorite dish I’ve made in class would be the Beef Bordelaise we made in Meat Fabrication. But my favorite dishes to make in general would have to be Cajun Creole. You can’t find any food that tastes like it.and it’s damn good!”
Chef Brigsten and Chef Randy Cheramie are two of Terrebonne’s favorite Chefs and from whom he has learned the most, “Chef Randy is best at critiquing food. I hate when you ask someone how to improve a dish and they say ‘nothing.’ You can always improve and Chef Randy knows that.”
Terrebonne isn’t really sure what the future holds for him. He plans to see where his externships take him, “I want to do one of my externships at La Foret in downtown New Orleans,” Terrebone says, “they have one of the fifty Master Chefs in the United States; the only one in Louisiana.”
Terrebonne would also like to do an externship in Denver, “I went to school there for a year and loved the city, but I just think it’d be hard to leave Louisiana.
