Chef
Scanga
Most chefs will tell you cooking is about the food. Chef Scanga will tell you it’s about the person on the other side of the plate.
That philosophy — patient, precise, fundamentally generous — is what makes The Milton Inn feel different from the first bite to the last.
Where it
All Began
Christopher Scanga grew up in Baltimore County, Maryland, in a family where food was how you showed someone you cared. His first kitchen job was at Mercy Ridge Senior Living Community in Timonium — not a celebrated restaurant, not a stage in Paris, but a dining room full of people who looked forward to their meals. He was sixteen. He never forgot what that felt like.
At eighteen, he enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. The CIA gave him technique. What shaped him more was the externship that followed: a chance to work under Chef Cindy Wolf at Charleston, one of the most acclaimed kitchens in the Mid-Atlantic.
Wolf’s approach to food — ingredient-driven, classically grounded, deeply attentive — became the lens through which Scanga has cooked ever since. After graduating in 2009, he returned to Charleston full-time. In 2012, he stepped into the Sous Chef role at Johnny’s in Roland Park. By 2014, he was Executive Chef at Petit Louis, leading one of Baltimore’s most beloved French bistros.
In 2021, he and Tony Foreman opened the doors of The Milton Inn together. It is the culmination of everything that came before it — and the beginning of what he considers his most personal work.
“My starting point is always from the perspective of those I’m cooking for — what I think they’ll enjoy, and how I can best present it in a way that’s beautiful and enticing.”
— Chef Scanga