John Shields |
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| Born | 1951 May 5 |
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| Nationality | American |
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| Occupation | chef |
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John Shields is an American chef, food writer, and host of the PBS television shows Chesapeake Bay Cooking with John Shields and Coastal Cooking with John Shields.[1]
Life
He is a native of Baltimore, Maryland.
Shields studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music; he moved to Provincetown / Cape Cod with aspirations of becoming a rock star, and played piano in local bars. One day an injured friend asked John to work his shift in the kitchen of a popular Cape Cod inn. This led to many years as a restaurant chef & owner, author, and host of two national public television series.[2] In the 1980s, Shields moved to Northern California, where he joined the New American Food revolution. He was executive chef at A La Carte, a French restaurant in Berkeley. Shields opened his first restaurant, Gertie's Chesapeake Bay Café, in 1983[3] in Berkeley's Gourmet Ghetto. In the late 1990s he returned to Baltimore, and opened Gertrude's at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Serving locally sourced food, Gertrude's received positive press in Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, the Washington Post, Edible DC, the Baltimore Sun, and has been a multi-year winner of Baltimore Magazine’s “Best of Baltimore,”.
Shields specializes in regional American coastal cuisine, and in particular the cuisine of his native Chesapeake Bay region.[4] He is a proponent of slow food and local food, and is active in related organizations such as the Chesapeake Sustainable Business Alliance, Slow Food, and the Chef's Collaborative.[citation needed]
Shields is openly gay and works with his husband, John Gilligan, at Gertrude's.[5]
Television
- Chesapeake Bay Cooking with John Shields [6] (1998), PBS
- Coastal Cooking with John Shields [7] (2005), PBS
- Food Network
Books
- The Chesapeake Bay Cookbook (Addison-Wesley, 1990)
- The Chesapeake Bay Crab Cookbook (Addison-Wesley, 1992)
- Chesapeake Bay Cooking with John Shields (Broadway Books, 1998)
- Chesapeake Bay Cooking with John Shields, 25th anniversary edition (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015)
- The New Chesapeake Kitchen (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018)
References
External links
