Standing on an Ocean City stage alongside fellow Maryland chefs, Zack Mills was in disbelief.
To be among the nominees at the Restaurant Association of Maryland’s 2025 Awards Gala earlier this month was an honor of its own for Mills; to win wasn’t even a consideration in his mind.
“I didn’t expect to win this. I really didn’t,” said Mills, chef at the True Chesapeake restaurant in Baltimore’s Whitehall Mill. “I was standing on that stage and just staring at my feet and just being like ‘You’re lucky to be up here and be thankful. I’m gonna be so happy for whomever wins because there’s a lot of talented humans on that stage.’ And then I heard my name.”
The restaurant association named Mills as Maryland’s 2025 Chef of the Year.
“I couldn’t believe it, truly couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I was lucky enough to have Chris Amendola [chef at foraged] right next to me, who’s a dear friend and somebody I’ve been cooking with for years. We gave each other a big hug…. It still feels a little like a dream.”
Mills grew up in a food-centric household where he remembers his paternal grandmother – a first-generation Italian American – and his mother making fresh pasta and other foods in their family’s kitchen.
“To this day, we still try to get together for family dinner as much as humanly possible. My life has kind of revolved around food and family.”
He worked summer jobs in restaurants, and by the time he was in college the popularity of the Food Network television channel was booming. Although Mills never sought the fame of becoming a television cook, he was drawn to the idea of “playing with food” as a career.
After graduating from The French Culinary Institute, Mills went on to work in various Washington, D.C. area kitchens before cooking under the direction of Chef Michael Mina of the Mina Group. Mills would later serve as executive chef at Wit & Wisdom, Mina’s upscale American tavern at the Four Seasons Hotel Baltimore.
Eventually, Mills joined forces with his friends Nick Schauman and Patrick Hudson to open the True Chesapeake restaurant in 2019.
“The fact that I get to play with food all day and feed people and see a reaction to somebody eating something I made is still the craziest thing to me…. It was just a hobby that turned into a career that now, looking back 20 plus years later, I’m just so thankful,” Mills said.
True Chesapeake sources its oysters from their own oyster farm along Southern Maryland’s St. Jerome Creek.
“What an amazing thing to be able to support oyster farms that are going to continue to put more oysters in the water, continue to let those oysters eat all that algae, and let all the sunlight going down to the bottom and the plant life growing,” Mills said.
Mills credits his Chef of the Year award, in part, to True Chesapeake’s focus on sourcing local ingredients – such as their farm-raised oysters – and promoting sustainability by cooking invasive species like snakeheads and blue catfish.
According to Mills, about 9 million to 15 million blue catfish need to be harvested to keep its population size the same as it is currently – not even accounting for the need to reduce the invasive species.
Mills hopes more restaurants will put invasive species like blue catfish and snakehead on their menus and educate guests about them.
“The more people cook this stuff, the better it’s going to be for the environment, the better it’s going to be for the water, and that’s just something that everybody should want,” he said.
When developing True Chesapeake’s menu, Mills seeks to showcase ingredients that are in season.
“Right now our snake head is pan-seared and being served with a winter squash curry sauce. That turned out pretty good. But then I’m going to work on something for the spring, where we’re butter-poaching it as a little lighter version of the fish, and then pairing it with more seasonal ingredients like peas and mushrooms.”
Other times, Mills draws from food-related memories and lessons from mentors, such as a schnitzel he baked out of catfish and snakehead that was inspired by a D.C. mentor.
“The flavor profile of the sauce that I make with that, with brown butter and lemon and capers, is something that, the second I smell it, it just brings me back to my line cooking days in D.C. and learning from my mentor,” he said.
When Mills was in culinary school, his mom bought him a bookshelf to store his cookbooks on. Today, his expansive cookbook collection also serves as inspiration in the development of his own recipes.
“I have a bookshelf at home that is just chock full and the shelves are bowing…. I remember that shelf in New York City with like three books on it, and now they’re everywhere,” he said.
Thinking back to when he started his culinary journey, Mills said he wants to support the next generation of chefs.
“It’s a really hard business, and it’s a hard way to come up,” he said. “I still remember my line cooking days and how hard it was. So trying to bring up cooks to become chefs, and making their lives a little easier while they do so than how I had it.”
Mills volunteers to cook for national charitable organizations such as No Kid Hungry and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. He wants to continue helping the community in any way he can.
“The one thing I’ve always tried to do throughout my career is just do the right thing.” That includes “doing as much work in the community as possible, and supporting the important charities that are important to both myself, the restaurant, and the city.”
Now with a Chef of the Year title to his name, Mills plans to continue trying to improve upon his success.
“I love this restaurant. I’m planning on cooking in this restaurant for a lot of years,” he said. “So now it’s just, how do I one up myself at this point? Because my biggest competition is me; it’s not anybody else. So it’s just, how can I make myself better and keep evolving and take this award, meaning I need to buckle back down and show people that I earned it.”
