After a 20 year career in fine dining, Sukeban is Jacqueline Blanchard’s first restaurant and solo project - a New Orleans take on a Japanese style izakaya. Jacqueline is a 10th generation Cajun from Bayou Lafourche in Southeast Louisiana’s Assumption Parish. Her family fled Nova Scotia during the Acadian exile and settled into the Lafourche Valley in the late 1700’s as farmers, and they’ve been there ever since. Cooking has always been in the fabric of her family - taking part in traditions such as crawfish boils in the Spring and the old Cajun boucheries each fall. After getting her bachelor degree in Culinary Arts from Nicholls State University just after Hurricane Katrina, she headed west to join the team of Chef Thomas Keller’s French Laundry and Bouchon in Napa Valley. She later joined the team at Frasca in Boulder, CO in the restaurant’s early years, then went on to a stint at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York. She headed back to New Orleans as executive sous chef at Restaurant August for several years, and after a summer cooking in Provence, Jackie joined the team at San Francisco’s highly acclaimed Benu as sous chef where she helped the team earn 3 Michelin stars. In 2015, she moved back home to New Orleans to open Coutelier, a highly curated knife shop focusing on the finest hand forged Japanese cutlery - a niche business based on the needs of her peers and fellow cooking community of South Louisiana. 

She travels annually to Japan, sourcing the tools of this ancient craft they have come to foster an immense respect and understanding towards. Their goal is to support and promote the unrivaled focus of the multi-generation craftsmanship executed by Japanese blacksmiths who hand forge professional cutlery and tools for their culinary community. Her love for Japanese culture and cuisine and technique has deepened immensely along the way, and she thoughtfully sources her premium Japanese ingredients for Sukeban the same as the tools she sources for Coutelier.