The Celebrity Chefs Behind Wye Oak Tavern Bring Seasonal Cooking to a Whole New Level
You’ve seen chef Bryan Voltaggio compete on shows like Top Chef, Beat Bobby Flay, and most recently, Bobby’s Triple Threat, which began airing its fourth season on The Food Network. He also appears on late-night chat shows, early morning news shows, food festivals, and more. Given the jet set lifestyle of a celebrity chef, it would be reasonable to think that Voltaggio has become too big, too booked, and entirely too busy to cook in his own kitchen, even if that kitchen is in his own restaurant. But the chef and TV personality with more than two decades under his belt as a restaurateur is the first to dispel that notion. Rather than trade menu planning, ingredient sourcing, and stove time for frequent flights, filming schedules, and personal appearances, Voltaggio maintains a hands-on approach in his role as chef.
“When Michael (Voltaggio’s brother, a fellow chef and Top Chef star/television personality) and I finish a television show, we very much go back into our restaurants, put our heads down and make sure we’re essentially chained to our stoves,” Voltaggio says. “It’s not likely for us to ever roll into a restaurant, drop off a concept, hand over a book of recipes, then grab a glass of wine and walk the floor.” Instead, Voltaggio says it’s important that he and his brother continue to cook, develop dishes, mentor, and work in the kitchen alongside their teams, “so people understand that what they’re experiencing in our restaurants authentically comes from us, our voice, and our hands.”
A testament to this hands-on approach is the chef’s latest venture, Wye Oak Tavern, a seasonal steakhouse located inside Frederick, Maryland’s luxe Visitation Hotel. Forged alongside his brother and fellow James Beard nominee, Michael Voltaggio, the restaurant taps seasonal ingredients and mid-Atlantic flavors to deliver a modern take on classic tavern fare.
Often, a pairing of celebrity chefs-and-elevated-concept is enough to put a dining destination on the map. But this venture is a little something more — one that’s emotionally charged, imbued with meaning, and steeped in nostalgia for the brothers, who were raised in Frederick and carry a deep connection to the place. (Bryan is raising a family of his own there.) For them, doing right by the city situated less than an hour’s drive from Washington D.C. and Baltimore and showcasing the bounty of its surrounding mountains, wineries, orchards, and farmland is a must.
“This project is very personal to my brother and me because it’s in our hometown, but also because it’s within Frederick’s first [new] hotel in more than 50 years. It’s bringing hospitality back to downtown Frederick at a bigger level, so we feel an immense responsibility to make it very authentic,” Voltaggio says.
The best way to authentically capture Frederick’s local flavors? By leaning into seasonal cooking, Voltaggio says — and when it comes to seasonality, there’s plenty to celebrate in the mid-Atlantic. “What’s fortunate for us, because of our geographic location, is that we get four distinct seasons,” he says. “In fact, I would argue that we get six distinct seasons when it comes to ingredients (including transitional periods from summer to fall and winter to spring), which makes this an exciting place to cook.”
While some regions’ only markers of fall are manufactured (think: pumpkin spice lattes added to coffee chain menus), Frederick is treated to cool, crisp air and colorful foliage at the start of September, and with it, butternut squash, apples, pears, concord grapes, braising greens and a host of other quintessentially fall ingredients, many of which will make appearances on the Wye Oak Tavern menu. Then there’s a so-called sixth season specialty and what Voltaggio calls the region’s “greatest resource,” Maryland Blue Crab. “Everybody thinks of blue crab as a peaking for July 4th celebrations. But the tail end of crab season is through October, and this is when they are meatier, fattier, and best tasting.”
While many chefs lean on fruits, veggies, and other crop foods for seasonal cooking, Voltaggio takes the philosophy step further with a seasonal and hyperlocal selection from the butcher’s block, too.
“Not a lot of people look at Maryland as a ranching area, but there are really great beef producers here,” Voltaggio says, name-checking Roseda Farm, which raises Black Angus cattle in Monkton, Maryland. “Some of their cattle are raised in Frederick, only three miles from the restaurant.” Locally sourced steaks are dry-aged for about 21 to 30 days by the producer, then dry-aged further at Wye Oak Tavern for another 40 to 50 days before being featured on the menu, a process that concentrates flavor and makes meat more tender. For the fall and winter months, the chef plans to take further advantage of the local food source by featuring other cuts on the menu, aged for longer periods of time.
Come fall, Wye Oak Tavern will also feature venison from Millbrook Venison, a New York rancher of American-bred, free-range, and pasture-fed game raised without steroids, hormones, and chemical additives. “Not a lot of people look to that meat, but it’s lean and really good for you,” he says. “It has a flavor profile that signifies a seasonal transition and a distinct flavor that does well with sweet spice, juniper, pine, and rosemary.” The chef will also tap braising cuts, such as short ribs, beef cheeks, and shanks to use in long stews and more.
Supporting local ranchers and growers isn’t the only way to authentically capture Frederick’s unique sense of place, notes Voltaggio. The chef champions what he calls “detailed dining” as a way of infusing the area’s culture and heritage into the tavern’s most memorable dishes. Take the “Coddies” appetizer, described on the menu as a “salted cod brandade, cauliflower tartar sauce, [and] cauliflower giardiniera.” The dish sounds refined, but it’s rooted in humble, Baltimore bar food.
“This dish was a bar snack popular in the pubs of Baltimore in the early 1920s. Basically, it consisted of salted cod and whipped potato made in a brandade style (puréed with olive oil and milk, or cream) and served with yellow mustard between two saltine crackers,” Voltaggio says. In the tavern’s version, the potato and cod brandade is crusted with crushed saltines and fried, almost like a fish stick, then accompanied with a tarter sauce (made from cauliflower cream with dill, parsley, cornichon and capers) and a jardinere (of pickled cauliflower, small young turnips, and baby carrots sourced from a Mennonite co-op in Southern Pennsylvania and mixed with mustard seed and turmeric as a play on the yellow mustard element of the classic dish). “It’s a way of giving [diners] a little bit of regional food history,” Voltaggio says. “Either people who grew up in the region know it or we’re helping some discover it for the first time.”
Another charmer of a dish and shining example of Voltaggio brothers’ approach to detailed dining is the dessert menu’s unassuming Apple Dumpling, which serves as a tribute to the Visitation Academy (the all-girls’ school that at one time occupied the Visitation Hotel and Wye Oak Tavern’s space) and its Apple Dumpling Day.
As legend goes, students in the 1800s protested the placement of a new faculty of nuns by staging a hunger strike. Meanwhile, local residents in Frederick welcomed the sisters to the area by bringing them dinner and apple dumplings for dessert. The nuns used the dumplings to woo the girls and “sweeten their disposition.” The plan worked, and thus, Apple Dumpling Day became a school tradition, in which students picked apples from the school’s own trees and the nuns prepared the sweet treats.
In homage to the long-standing tradition, Wye Oak Tavern created their version of a traditional apple dumpling, in which cinnamon, brown butter, and sugar are baked with apples and pastry, along with an apple cider vinegar-spiked caramel, and served with an ice cream made from organic cinnamon cereal steeped in milk.
The details are delicious. But more so, it’s the meaning behind Voltaggios’ detailed dining, executed with seasonality top of mind, that results in a truly unique culinary experience, one that could only come from Frederick, Maryland. “It’s not just about ingredients, but aromas and visual cues that come with each season and drive the creative process. There’s emotion and true feelings that drive seasonal cooking,” Voltaggio says. “If you don’t cook like that here, and with that emotion, then you’re not experiencing the full opportunity of being in this area.”
Experiencing the full opportunity of the area means Wye Oak Tavern diners, and its cooks, can always expect something new. Adds the chef, “If I was cooking with asparagus all year, I would be pulling out my hair.”
At Visitation Hotel, the Voltaggio brothers’ hometown spirit comes through in every stay and every bite at Wye Oak Tavern. Discover Frederick’s local flavor and make yourself at home.