Charming and charmingly enthusiastic about his kitchen craft, Terence Feury, executive chef at the Ritz-Carlton Georgetown’s Fahrenheit, attributes his interest in and passion for cooking to his parents and to a gift from his sister, a Betty Crocker children’s cookbook. “I always enjoyed that,” he says.

Of course, various other influences hooked him into a cooking career, even his early stint as a dishwasher at an Italian specialty store while he was in high school in New Jersey.