Chef Daniel Horwitz

I became a chef by working hard and by loving food. It is difficult to say when my culinary career began. I don’t have a story about how I started as a dishwasher at the age of 13 and worked my way up to executive chef. I don’t have impressive rhetoric about how I slaved in a French kitchen peeling potatoes in 12 hour shifts. I didn’t tour top notch restaurants in New York or in any other major city. I began my journey by having an innate unstoppable passion for food.

At the age of six, I was given my first cook book. Although I coveted that Betty Crocker classic, it was soon to be replaced by the great chefs series on PBS.

During my sophomore year at Rutgers College, I was hired to work the counter at a busy deli in North Brunswick NJ. It was there that I got my first real taste of kitchen work ethic.

After graduation, I took a life changing job at the Ryland Inn in Whitehouse NJ. I apprenticed for the first 10 months without pay. The experience was worth every penny not received.I worked under the tutelage of Chef Craig Shelton who worked under such great names as Wolfgang Puck, David Bouley, and Joel Robuchon. I spent 3 ½ years at the Ryland Inn working all stations from pastry to poisson. I was at the Ryland when we received the highest rating from the NY times. I can confidently say that I am a legitimate chef because of my training under Chef Shelton and all the talented sous chefs of the Ryland Inn.

After the Ryland inn, I filled my resume with experiences from a coffee shop, an upscale caterer, an Italian restaurant and my own personal chef business for the affluent of central NJ.

In December of 1999 I decided to make a change and move to Baltimore MD. At first it was a rough move and I wasn’t sure I had made the right decision. I found a job working in fells point. I wasn’t happy and I was working my self to the bone. But then I met my future wife and things began to look up. I quit that job in fells point and I took a job as the catering chef of Linwoods in Owings Mills.

I worked at Linwoods for about 3 years and then I decided to do what any red blooded idiot would do . . . I quit my job, bought a house, got my wife pregnant and started my own business out of my row home in Hampden.

Through my hard work and the endless support of my business partner ( my lovely wife Margo), my family and my friends, The Pantry started to grow. In march of 2006 I moved from Hampden to historic Bolton Hill to my very own commercial kitchen space. The rest as they say is history . . .