Marcelle Bienvenu shares a laugh with Jan Risher on Thursday, May 15, 2025, at her home in St. Martinville.
Spending a spring afternoon with Marcelle Bienvenu in her St. Martinville kitchen and garden is like stepping into a Cajun waltz -- colorful, unhurried, layered and playful.
Volunteer zinnias are blooming thick as a polka-dot blanket. Nine different birds are singing. The grand dame of Louisiana Cajun cooking is making crawfish étouffée just the way her mama taught her.
To be clear, her mother, Rhena Broussard Bienvenu, called it a "stew-fay."
"Everybody has their own way to do anything," Bienvenu said. "As long as you think it tastes good, it's fine with me, but as soon as I see a brown étouffée, oh no..."
And her voice trails off, because a brown étouffée is where she draws the line.
"We gonna do it Mama's way," she said. "It's so simple. It takes me half an hour."
As she added the onions to the pot, she recalled a visitor who asked how long making the étouffée would take, to which Bienvenu answered, "About 45 minutes."
"She says, 'Oh, I thought I was gonna be here for three hours,'" Bienvenu said with a laugh. "And I said, 'No, anything that takes three hours or is 'day one/day two,' that is not for me.'"
'Her life in food'
The author of the 1991 classic "Who's Your Mama, Are You Catholic, and Can You Make a Roux?" and a host of other cookbooks, Bienvenu has witnessed -- and helped shape -- many milestones in the rise of Louisiana cuisine.
Her résumé winds through the kitchens and careers of Louisiana's culinary great -- and it's hard to say who inspired whom along the way.
Bienvenu met renowned New Orleans restauranteur Ella Brennan in the early 1970s when she was working on a Time Life book with a photographer and researcher who wanted to learn about Cajun Country. That was a time when Bienvenu says she didn't even know she lived in Cajun Country. Brennan invited her to come work at Commander's Palace.
"Ella and I would sit between shifts," Bienvenu remembers. "She and I would sit on the patio, and she would tell me about New Orleans food. And I would tell her about Cajun food."
In 1975, when Brennan was weighing whether to bring Paul Prudhomme to Commander's Palace as its first American chef, she talked it over with Bienvenu, who was then working in the Commander's catering division.
In 1982, when Brennan considered hiring a young Emeril Lagasse, she and Bienvenu again sat down to talk through the possibilities. When Lagasse went out on his own, Bienvenu joined him and helped managed the creation of his brand and cookbooks.
"Marcelle Bienvenu is one of the most knowledgeable people when it comes to Louisiana cooking," Lagasse said. "She is a gracious and humble woman whose passion for the cuisine runs deep."
For years, she was a food columnist for The Times-Picayune.
Bienvenu also worked with Chef John Folse for 11 years teaching culinary classes at Nicholls State University.
"She certainly has always been right there being the most beautiful, elegant thing in the room," said Poppy Tooker, host of "Louisiana Eats!," the NPR-affiliated radio show and podcast. "She's just such a special and wonderful person, and I think that comes from her life, partially her life in food from her earliest days right through her entire career."
Last year, Bienvenu re-released "Who's Your Mama, Are you Catholic, and Can you Make A Roux: A Cajun/Creole Family Album Cookbook" in a new bold and beautiful, updated style. Lagasse wrote the foreword for the giant 398-page bright pink collection of recipes and photographs.
In reflecting on her life and legacy, and how she built so many relationships, Bienvenu says she learned a lot from her father, who was a newspaperman.
"I guess everybody always said I was like Daddy. He was a big raconteur. He never met a stranger. He was always happy," she said. "He was of the opinion that you never let the truth get in the way of a good story. It was wonderful. I think that has been me. I like stories. I like to know about people, how they feel, what they do."
She claims her father's take on life of never letting the truth get in the way of a good story as her motto.
"I told that to the priest the other day," she said. "And he said, 'Now, Marcelle, I'm not sure about that.'"
'Good ice' and the days of cheap crawfish
These days, Bienvenu spends most of her time in her St. Martinville home with her husband, friends and family. She is a fan of saying "yes" to invitations to get out and about.
At 80, Bienvenu is as svelte and stylish as a Paris runway model -- with twice the grace and just a touch of fuss, which only adds to her charm.
After all, she's famously particular about her ice, often bringing her own to events and restaurants.
She likes, as she describes it, "good ice."
"The ice in home refrigerators, they're white, right?" she asked. "It's nasty. They smell bad."
For the record, "good ice" is clear and "tastes like water," Bienvenu explains. "And if you don't have good ice, you cannot have a good cocktail."
In the guest house kitchen -- just next door to the home she has shared with her husband, architect Rock Lasserre, for decades -- Bienvenu prepares her mother's crawfish étouffée.
Lasserre designed the kitchen in the guest house. It's picture perfect, but there's one thing she wishes they had done differently. The propane burners are situated at the end of the island, taking up its full width, leaving no room to rest a spoon or prep ingredients nearby.
A little design flaw like that doesn't faze Bienvenu. She's been making her mama's crawfish étouffée so long, she could do it with her eyes closed.
She believes she knows the origin of crawfish étouffée.
"As far as I'm concerned, it started in Breaux Bridge," Bienvenu said. "There was a little cafe on Main Street across from the church in Breaux Bridge. I think it was called Thelma's, and she would have that every Friday. Back before they started the Crawfish Festival, all the crawfish came from the basin."
She remembers her father saying, "We're so poor we're going to have to have crawfish Friday because they were like 15 cents a pound."
Bakelite jewelry and beyond
Bienvenu says she doesn't spend much time thinking about what kind of legacy she'll leave -- though she does want her nieces and nephews to appreciate her Bakelite jewelry collection. (One of her nephews is Gov. Jeff Landry, by the way -- her sister's son.)
"I said they'll probably throw that away, so I better label it," she said. "They'll just think it's plastic."
So, she did what she does well: She documented it. She made a little booklet about the pieces and their history, just like she once did with her mama's recipes, and the flavors and stories of Cajun Country.
In her own way, Bienvenu is responsible for far more than a collection of cookbooks. Her work has helped preserve a way of life -- one meal, one story and one good-ice cocktail at a time.
Crawfish stew-fay
Recipe by Marcelle Bienvenu
Makes four to six servings
1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 cups chopped yellow onions
1 cup chopped green bell peppers
1/2 cup chopped celery
2 pounds peeled crawfish tails
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, dissolved in 1/2 cup water
salt and cayenne
2 tablespoons chopped green onions
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley leaves
cooked long-grain rice
1. Heat the butter over medium heat in a large, heavy pot. Add the onions, bell peppers and celery. Cook, stirring, until soft and lightly golden -- about 10 to 12 minutes.
2. Add the crawfish and cook, stirring occasionally, until they begin to "throw off a little liquid" -- about five minutes.
3. Add the water/flour slurry. (Bienvenu puts hers in a small, lidded jar and shakes it up to mix it well). Reduce heat to medium-low and cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture thickens -- about three to four minutes.
4. Season with salt and cayenne.
5. Remove from heat. Add the green onions and parsley.
6. Serve in bowls over rice.