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Discover Lafayette welcomes Marcelle Bienvenu, cookbook author and food writer who has been preparing Cajun and Creole dishes since the 1960s. A St. Martinville native, she still lives there with her husband, Rock Lasserre.
Marcelle has written about Creole and Cajun cooking for The Times-Picayune, Time-Life Books, and has been featured in Garden & Gun, Food & Wine, Saveur, Southern Living, Redbook, The New York Times, Louisiana Life, and Acadiana Profile. She authored Who’s Your Mama? Are You Catholic and Can You Make a Roux?, as well as Who’s Your Mama? The Sequel, and Cajun Cooking for Beginners.
She co-edited Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, which was nominated for a James Beard Award in 2009.
Marcelle worked with Emeril Lagasse for 15 years and coauthored several cookbooks with him, including Louisiana Real & Rustic, Emeril’s Creole Christmas, Emeril’s TV Dinners, and Every Day’s a Party. She also owned and operated the beloved restaurant Chez Marcelle in Broussard, at the former Billeaud Family Plantation site.
She has worked at legendary restaurants including Commander’s Palace and K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen in New Orleans, and taught for 11 years at the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University.
Growing Up in St. Martinville
“When I was a youngster, it was idyllic. You could ride your bike anywhere. Nobody cared where you were going. We could go around the block and ask all the ladies, ‘What do you have for supper tonight?’ If I liked hers better than mine, I could stay with her. Everybody on our block was related.”
Her father’s family owned The Teche News, and she grew up folding papers and helping with printing: “Besides the newspaper, Daddy did wedding invitations, football programs. I used to hate it because my hands were always full of ink… Mama would fix the sandwiches at the newspaper office because we never went home on paper day until late. The ink was all over your bread.”
She credits her early love of cooking to meals at family camps on Vermilion Bay: “My father was a Boy Scout leader, and we had a camp at Granddad’s on Vermilion Bay, at Sycamore Point, and we had one in the Basin. A lot of our meals were cooked on an open fire wood bar. And I thought that was absolutely fabulous. So I would sit at my daddy’s elbow with his beer. I was beer holder. I would say, shouldn’t you go medium low? You don’t have a dial, you’d have to move it. I became infatuated with that. I thought that was just marvelous. “We were laughing the other day about when we were little, nobody said, oh, we’re going to have Cajun food. Are we going to New Orleans? Can we have Creole food? We never would. Nobody ever said that.”
An interesting side note: Marcelle is the aunt of Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry. His mother and Marcelle’s sister, Edna Bienvenu Landry, died in 2019. Our governor also unfortunately recently lost his father, architect and business owner, Al James Landry, on July 30, 2025.
The Start of a Culinary Career
In 1971, while working at The Times-Picayune, Marcelle met the Time-Life Books crew.
“They were thinking of doing a book on Acadian Creole cooking… We were supposed to be only a chapter in the Southern book, but we ended up with a whole book.”
Working with the Brennans and legendary chef Paul Prudhomme shaped her approach:
“He really brought Cajun cooking up to another level… It was absolutely wonderful to see them marrying those two cuisines to see what they came up with.” Before Prudhomme joined Commander’s Palace, no one in New Orleans was serving chicken and andouille sausage gumbo.
Chez Marcelle
Marcelle’s uncle offered to finance a restaurant in Broussard, and they transformed the old Billeaud Plantation home: “We did fabulously for almost four years and then the whole business… the oil industry crashed. It happened so fast my CPA called to ask if we had closed.”
Food Writing & Cookbooks
Ella Brennan encouraged Marcelle to write about food for The Times-Picayune. This led to her first book, a collection of her columns: “Mama said, ‘Why don’t you just write a book, just get all your columns and put them together?’ And that’s how Who’s Your Mama? Are You Catholic and Can You Make a Roux? happened.”
Her more recent re-release of Who’s Your Mama is a delightful treat with beautiful colors and a celebration of pink, was sparked by a friend and a publisher’s chance conversation.
Teaching at Nicholls State
After Hurricane Katrina, Marcelle began teaching at the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute:
“I stayed almost 12 years… I never thought I would like to teach. But as the generation gap got bigger and bigger, it was time for me to go.”
With Emeril Lagasse
“When we did the first book, Louisiana Real & Rustic, he was very good about keeping to our roots… He was true to keeping the book honest.”
She watched his transformation on TV: He was shy. But when they turned that camera on, he lit up. It was amazing to see him do that.”
Food Philosophy
“Learn to make three good dishes… You go sit with your mama or grandma in the kitchen and watch what they do.” Her favorite dish? “Spaghetti.”
“I’m really not a big fan of making gumbo… it has to be cold outside.”
Where to Find Her Book
Marcelle’s latest release is available at Renaissance Market, The Pink Paisley, Barnes & Noble, Caroline & Company, and Amazon. “It is a great wedding gift.”
Final Parting Words….
“Gumbo became a food because of having to have something to eat. They had to use whatever they had… Who do you think ate the first oyster? Somebody who was damn hungry.”
