Terry Antoniuk: Personal Chef

By Paula Anne Delve Phillips

Terry Antoniuk returned from her 2002 Manhattan honeymoon inspired about life and love and ready to cook up a storm. As head chef for House Specials Personal Chef Service, she wanted the trip to include plenty of culinary delights. Her husband Jeff, a sax player and college professor, looked forward to catching some jazz. The couple’s stay in New York was filled with museums, music and restaurants, and Chef Terry’s clients still benefit from the inspiration it afforded her.

“I wanted to go to some of the restaurants that I had read about, and had cookbooks from,” recalls the petite blonde in her Texas twang. Among them were Sarabeth’s Kitchen, a restaurant associated with an award-winning jam maker and pastry chef, and Amy’s Bakery, which sells Amy Scherber’s famous breads. While there, the newlyweds collected an autograph from the gourmet guru. An evening at the Blue Note accommodated the groom and a meal at Union Square Café proved memorable for both of them.

“We went to Union Square,” recalls Chef Terry Antoniuk. “It’s a restaurant that has one of the first cook books that I collected back in 1994. I ordered roast chicken with roasted potatoes - nothing exotic but it was the best roast chicken and roast potatoes I ever had. With their attention to quality in the ingredients and their attention to detail in the preparation , they elevated the dish to a culinary experience. That’s the kind of cooking I wanted to do,” she says.

By all accounts, she has succeeded. Back in Annapolis, Terry Antoniuk industriously marketed her personal chef business and developed new recipes for her rapidly growing clientele. One of her recipes is for “Stuffed Pork Chops With Mash Potatoes,” large pork chops filled with a pecan stuffing and topped with gravy. The entree can be paired with vegetables such as green beans or roasted Brussels sprouts.

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