Emily
Personal Chef
Emily’s passion for food goes way back to her early childhood when she would play “restaurant,” writing up pretend menus for pretend guests. Fresh pastas and roast chickens lovingly prepared by her Italian American grandmother and great-grandmother started her on her path. Emily spent plenty of time in the kitchen helping her mother prepare dinners and baked goods and by high school, she was making cheese souffles on her own just for fun!
After graduating from college in Boston, Emily spent years working in the front of the house at restaurants throughout her native DMV, but her passion for cooking couldn’t be tamed and she enrolled at L’Academie de Cuisine in 2014.
After graduating culinary school, she worked for the Bryan Volataggio restaurant group out in Ashburn, VA and eventually found her way over to the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, MD as the starting sous chef and then head chef of the museum cafe. Bright and colorful seasonal ingredients are what inspire her most and she truly believes that food can be art!
You have guests coming over for dinner, what are you making?
Classic steakhouse dinner. Crisp wedge salad with blue cheese, pan-seared ribeyes with Cafe de Paris butter, grilled asparagus, mushroom risotto, and chocolate mousse with candied orange peel for dessert.
What’s your favorite ingredient to cook with?
It’s a tie between butter, garlic, and fresh herbs! Anything with all three!
What’s your favorite season to cook in, and what dish are you making?
Another tie! It’s between late summer and fall. I love the colorful produce in late summer: corn on the cob with butter, ripe tomatoes for a killer caprese salad, and stone fruits for a nice fruit tart or galette. But the apples, spices, and comfort foods of fall always call to me as well: apple spice cakes, cider, butternut squash and sage mac and cheese!