Mardi Gras Brings to Mind images of debauched cele-brations wherein revelers lose all inhibitions in a frenzy of merriment. While, er, we can recall a few such evenings from our own wilder days (just barely), we'd like to propose something a trifle more refined. We've invited John Folse and Steve Zucker from Lafitte's Landing Restaurant at Bittersweet Plantation in Louisiana to help us celebrate. Only last year, S. M. Hahn of the Times-Picayune gave the place her highest 5-bean rating.

John Folse opened Lafitte's Landing in 1978. In one short decade, his gift for Cajun and Creole cuisine (not to mention his gift for marketing that cuisine around the globe-he has his own line of Louisiana products, his own TV show, and a number of cookbooks to his credit) led the Louisiana legislature to dub him Louisiana's Culinary Ambassador to the World. Politics aside, Folse and his landmark Cajun/Creole restaurant earned critical acclaim (Craig Claiborne loved the gumbo) as well as popular success. Sadly, in 1998, Lafitte's Landing burned to the ground. Folse relocated the restaurant to nearby Donaldsonville, where he has again struck culinary gold. Relying heavily on local produce, fish, and game, the restaurant serves the authentic regional food that its predecessor was famous for, including gumbo, turtle soup, fried crawfish, jambalaya, étouffée, red velvet cake, and bananas Foster.

One key to Folse's success is that he hires well. To wit, Lafitte's executive chef Steve Zucker. Zucker began his career at age 17 in New Orleans at the renowned Antoine's. At just 21, he was named executive chef of the original Lafitte's Landing. After three years, he left to pursue formal training at Johnson & Wales. Culinary arts degree in hand, he headed to Las Vegas, where he was eventually named one of the three best chefs in the city by VIP Magazine; he was working at Bix's at the time. Last year, Zucker returned to the new Lafitte's Landing. "The food is made with so much passion and precision," Hahn wrote, "you won't believe the chef hasn't yet scratched the surface of 30."