Andrew Evans
The Inn at Easton, Easton, Md
Andrew Evans’s imaginative cuisine, a blend of Australian, Asian, and Chesapeake Bay cooking, has garnered rave reviews in national publications from National Geographic Traveler to Southern Living. Food & Wine magazine named his inn, which he operates with his wife, Liz, one of America’s top fifty romantic getaways. You’ve enjoyed Chef Evans’s recipe columns in each issue of this magazine; a story about the region’s top young chefs wouldn’t be complete without him.
Age: 39
Resume: The Culinary Institute of America, 1993. Worked at restaurants in Richmond, Va., and in Australia for seven years, including a stint as head chef in one of its best Vietnamese restaurants.
Signature dishes: Slow-cooked lamb sirloin; sticky fig and ginger pudding
Food for thought: “I became a chef because I liked food, to be honest. My mom was a great cook. We never had processed food in our house. She had the ability to whip up dishes with flavor, which is the foundation, I think, of cooking. My restaurant is not about coming up with wacky flavor combinations just to be different. Restraint on the plate is a difficult thing to do sometimes. The easiest thing to do is start piling things on and say, ‘Oh, wow, that’s really something,’ but you lose sight of what it’s like to eat it. The interesting thing is that you’ll get a better response with perfectly made mashed potatoes or oyster stew--if it’s done really well--than any crazy dish you can come up with. I worked in a really cool Vietnamese restaurant in Australia. We didn’t change dishes there. At that moment I stopped thinking about food purely as an inventive process but as a discipline. I was cooking the same dish for a year and a half, and it forced me to buckle down and be consistent. Focusing on preparation and being consistent is the hard part. I always tell my young chefs that anybody can be a good cook on a given day; the hard part is being a good chef every day.”
--Joe Sugarman
David Clark
Julia’s, Centreville, Md
Julia’s recently received a rare four-star review from the Baltimore Sun, helping this upstart gourmet spot in the unlikely town of Centreville become a destination restaurant. Reservations are tough to get, even though it’s only been open for a little over a year. David Clark and his wife, Valerie, are hoping that their early success will allow them to inject even more culinary imagination into their labor of love.
Age: 38
Resume: B.S. in Health Food Education, Frostburg State University, 1982. Baltimore International Culinary College, 1995. Started out as a steamer at Harris’s Crabhouse when he was sixteen. Went on to become sous chef at Kent Manor Inn and Hemingway’s (later its executive chef). Did stints in numerous local kitchens: Fisherman’s Inn, 208 Talbot, Tavern on the Bay, Poseidon (now called Annie’s).
Signature dish: Doesn’t like to pick just one; calls his style Innovative American cuisine, with Asian inspiration. Always includes classics (lamb rack, filet mignon), but changes up sauces and accompaniments; does great soups, such as oyster stew.
Food for thought: “I was adopted from Korea when I was five, so my experiences are all full-fledged American. But I’m interested in Asian cooking; I’m pretty much self-taught, though, picking up a lot on my own from reading and experimenting. I went to school for teaching but realized soon after that I was happiest when I was in the restaurant. My wife and I wanted our own, close to home. (She runs the front of the house.) When this place became available, we jumped on it. I make up the recipes and menus and love to include cross-cultural dishes. I didn’t want to just do the normal Eastern Shore favorites, like crab cakes and broiled fish. Although I want all the selections to be dramatic, I know I have to serve a more conservative audience. So I add in the unique items as appetizers and a couple of entrees. I’m adding more and more as people get used to trying new things. I never imagined how much hard work and dedication there is to owning your own restaurant--and discipline. But it’s the teamwork that makes it all work. Even down to the dishwasher and the bus kids, you have to have good, responsible people. You can’t be a success unless everyone works together.”
-- Kathy H. Ely
Alison Paige Chase
Aqua Terra, Annapolis
Although not formally trained, Alison Paige Chase is a confident chef, who’s not afraid to mix things up. From Caribbean to Cajun, her culinary preferences run the gamut and represent her mood and the season. Drawing on her keen intuition for what diners want, she’s one of Annapolis’s youngest restaurateurs and most promising up-and-coming chefs.
Age: 33
Resume: “When people ask me where I learned to cook, I like to tell them ‘the school of hard knocks.’ She worked in various positions, from server to bartender to wine steward, in restaurants in Philadelphia, New Jersey, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Columbus, and San Francisco. “Living in San Francisco and being able to go to the wineries in Napa and Sonoma is the foundation of my wine knowledge.”
Signature dishes: Duck tacos, tuna tartare, salmon timbales
Food for thought: “I don’t like to commit myself to one style of cooking. One day it’s Italian, another Mexican, another Asian. I was a sculpture major in art school, and so what’s also really important to me is presentation: texture, color, flavor. I find inspiration all over the place--at flower shows and looking at architecture to figure out how to build entrees on the plate. Being that this is very much a male-dominated field, it’s hard. It’s hot, you’re lifting heavy things, you’re dealing with sharp knives. And as a woman, you’re looked at as weak. But I started out in a rough environment at an old seafood restaurant in New Jersey. I had to come in at 6 a.m. and help the old women pick meat out of the turtles for the snapper soup. And when it got busy, you’d have sixty- and seventy-year-old waitresses yelling orders at you. And half of the other staff was bussed in from the local state prison. It was really exciting to see this whole other side of life that I never knew existed. And that was probably what started me off on the right foot in the kitchen. It really toughened me up early. So now I want to pull more than my own weight. I feel like I have to prove myself every day being a woman and not being culinary trained. I wash the dishes, whatever it takes. And I don’t look at myself as above the kitchen staff. I always leave with a great sense of pride knowing that I’ve done this. And it feels pretty good.”
--Kessler Burnett
Bob Rothfus
Nebula, Ocean City, Md
Ocean City’s restaurant cuisine has always been more about comfort than cutting edge. But with the opening of Galaxy and Nebula, suddenly, the food “downy ocean” has moved beyond crab cakes and stuffed flounder. The Washington Post called Nebula’s French-fusion cooking “the cream of the crop.”
Age: 24
Resume: The Culinary Institute of America, 2003. Worked at restaurants in Vermont and Maine. Started as a line cook at Ocean City’s Galaxy restaurant at age seventeen. “They taught me a lot there. I was introduced to a lot of Asian products and types of fish and meat. It motivated me to become a chef.”
Signature dish: Foie gras with hazelnut butter and strawberry preserves on brioche
Food for thought: “At thirteen, I was working with my uncle at his fine dining restaurant in Lancaster, Pa. Food became a passion for me. There’s so much heritage behind each different cuisine. I find that very interesting. And then to be able to take a traditional dish and interpret it in your own way--like our surf and turf. It’s made with grilled eel and grilled squab breast instead of lobster and filet. My goal is to open my own restaurant. I’d like to do a lot of comfort food but put a lot of French background into it. French food from the old country--stuff like braised short ribs, roasted chicken, cassoulet. The secret to being a good chef is organization and to have pride in your staff and to let them be creative, too. Treat everyone like an equal. I take opinions from everybody--even our dishwashers. I’ve had them taste stuff right out of my pan. Most are Mexican, and they’ll tell me stuff from their own backgrounds that I never would have thought of. If you keep an open mind, you’ll improve a lot.”
--Joe Sugarman
Kevin Kearney
Out of the Fire, Easton, Md
If you can’t find an available table in the fine dining mecca of Easton, Kevin Kearney is partially to blame. His creative twists on American comfort food have earned this first-time head chef outstanding reviews, turning this one-time politico into one of the hottest chefs on the Shore.
Age: 37
Resume: The Culinary Institute of America, 1997; sous chef in restaurants in New York, Aspen, St. Michaels, California. After graduating from The College of William & Mary with a degree in government/Russian-Soviet studies, the New Jersey native bounced around the political arena, working on Capitol Hill for five years as a staffer for “good members of Congress and bad members of Congress.” A sour stint on a gubernatorial campaign was the thrust he needed to swap his suit and briefcase for Dansko clogs and a set of Henckel knives.
Signature dishes: Grilled hanger steak with crispy gnocchi, butternut squash, mushrooms, rapini, and Kearney’s secret steak sauce; seared sea scallops with duck confit ragout.
Food for thought: “I’d always been interested in cooking since I was a kid, and in high school and college I worked in restaurants and always enjoyed it. Every year after college I’d reevaluate where I was in life, and every year I’d say, ‘Well, I could do this or cook, or I could do that, or I could cook. And finally I got to the point where I said, ‘This is ridiculous. Why don’t you just go do it?’ And unlike in politics, now I have much more control of my fate. I think I understand food, and I think I understand flavors. When I put a new item on the menu, about 80 percent of the time the night I serve it is the first time I’ve made it. It’s not an artistic thing for me. I think of it more as intellectual. And I like the fact, too, that at the end of the day, the end of the month, you know if you’ve done a good job. And we’re keeping consistently busy, so we must be doing something right here.”
--Kessler Burnett
