Cara Ober
Feb 8, 2023
How a restauranteur, chef, author, and television host became a leader for environmental causes pertaining to foodways, health, and economic justice
"My autographed copy of The New Chesapeake Kitchen is embellished with a loopy but earnest note: “Let’s cook the bay and body-friendly way. Best Fishes! John Shields.”
The author—a groundbreaking chef, serial restaurateur, and television host—is globally acknowledged as the authority on Chesapeake cuisine, as well as a leader for environmental causes pertaining to foodways, health, and economic justice. Many know him simply as John, a man with a contagious smile who cannot resist a corny joke or a conversation.
In 1990, decades before Maryland restaurants prioritized farm-to-table eating and locavore mores, Shields published the original Chesapeake Bay Cookbook, extolling the virtues of eating seasonal food grown locally, as well as strategically supporting Maryland-based watermen, farmers, and small businesses through meals that high- light the region’s bounty and cooking style.
“Chesapeake cuisine is a sense of place, of being rooted here,” he explains in an interview, describing the largest estuary in North America and its thousands of tributaries and creeks, with a climate that varies from the Appalachians to the Atlantic Ocean, as a teeming protein factory. According to Shields, Chesapeake cooking is about utilizing the freshest regional foods available and treating them simply and reverently to let those flavors come through...."
Read more here: https://bmoreart.com/2023/02/john-shields-culinary-champion-of-the-chesapeake.html