Despite her French last name, Diane Pierrelus, the executive chef of Arlington’s comfort-food destination, Whitlow’s on Wilson, is a homegrown lady who has cooked around D.C. for several years. She has the casual air of a home cook but the inherent skills and gravity of the classically trained. Without a culinary degree in hand, one wonders how did Pierrelus gain such skills. According to her, it goes back to her grandmother, who lived with and cooked for Pierrelus and her family in the days when Washington was a much smaller, more intimate town. The family lived in Georgetown, in a small house behind the now-closed Columbia Hospital for Women.
“My grandmother was old school,” says Pierrelus. “She baked pies and bread in a potbelly stove. We had chickens in the backyard, and every Sunday we had big Sunday dinners, and everyone came to our house.”
