John Shields is an American chef, food writer, and host of the

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

television shows ''Chesapeake Bay Cooking with John Shields'' and ''Coastal Cooking with John Shields''.

Life

He is a native of

Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...

, Maryland. Shields studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music; he moved to

Provincetown Provincetown () is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States census, Pr ...

/ 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. 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 in Berkeley's Gourmet Ghetto. In the late 1990s he returned to Baltimore, and opened Gertrude's at the

Baltimore Museum of Art The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of modern art, ...

. Serving locally sourced food, Gertrude's received positive press in ''

Food & Wine ''Food & Wine'' is an American monthly magazine published by Dotdash Meredith. It was founded in 1978 by Ariane and Michael Batterberry. It features recipes, cooking tips, travel information, restaurant reviews, chefs, wine pairings and sea ...

'', ''

Travel & Leisure ''Travel + Leisure'' is a travel magazine based in New York City, New York (state), New York. Published 12 times a year, it has 4.8 million readers, according to its corporate media kit. It is published by Dotdash Meredith, a subsidiary of IAC ( ...

'', the ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'', ''Edible DC'', the ''

Baltimore Sun ''The Baltimore Sun'' is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local, regional, national, and international news. Founded in 1837, the newspaper was owned by Tribune Publish ...

'', and has been a multi-year winner of ''

Baltimore Magazine ''Baltimore'' is a monthly magazine published in Baltimore, Maryland by Rosebud Entertainment L.L.C., a company owned by Steve Geppi and led by its President Michael Teitelbaum. It is the oldest, continuously published city magazine in the con ...

''’s “Best of Baltimore,”. Shields specializes in regional American coastal cuisine, and in particular the cuisine of his native

Chesapeake Bay The Chesapeake Bay ( ) is the largest estuary in the United States. The bay is located in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region and is primarily separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Delmarva Peninsula, including parts of the Ea ...

region. He is a proponent of slow food and

local food Local food is food that is produced within a short distance of where it is consumed, often accompanied by a social structure and supply chain different from the large-scale supermarket Food system, system. Local food (or locavore) movements ...

, and is active in related organizations such as the Chesapeake Sustainable Business Alliance, Slow Food, and the Chef's Collaborative. Shields is openly gay and works with his husband, John Gilligan, at Gertrude's.

Television

* Chesapeake Bay Cooking with John Shields (1998), PBS * Coastal Cooking with John Shields (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

Official siteTravel & LeisureEdible DC, Summer 2016
American television chefs American male chefs American food writers Living people Writers from Baltimore 1951 births Chefs from Maryland LGBTQ chefs Peabody Institute alumni {{US-tv-bio-stub