NORTHEAST | CHEF PROFILES

Chef Briana Mansberger Turned Small-Town Roots Into Big-Kitchen Confidence

THE WINE KITCHEN | MAP | INSTAGRAM

By Eric Barton | Dec. 18, 2025

AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.

Chef Briana Mansberger grew up in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in the kind of place where the landmarks are grocery stores and the kitchen is where the family calendar lives. “I spent a lot of time in the kitchen with my mom, grandma, and my dad,” she says, and those hours—Mother’s Day teas, family dinners, and the annual sprint of holiday baking—taught her that cooking is not a performance. It is a way to pull people into the same room and keep them there.

Now she is the executive chef at The Wine Kitchen in Frederick, Maryland, where she is turning a neighborhood favorite into a more ambitious, chef-driven place without sanding off its comfort. Her food sits in the sweet spot between technique and appetite: French technique, a pastry-trained sense of precision, and plates that still feel like the kind of dinner served on American tables. She builds menus that reward regulars, make room for diners who need options, and—best of all—turn skeptics into believers when an ingredient they swear they hate shows up in a dish they suddenly want again.

Briana Mansberger

Her instincts were formed early, in a family that she describes as “very meat and potatoes,” which meant she learned how to introduce change without starting a fight. She would cook meals that were “75 percent things they would like and enjoy and 25 percent something new and everyone had to try it.” It’s a strategy that reads now like training for restaurant life: respect the comfort zone, then nudge it forward.

The food memories she carries are specific and a little eccentric, which is usually a good sign in a chef. She still thinks about “beef liver and onions”—a dish only she and her mother would touch—and the way it taught her to see value in every part of an animal. She also remembers her grandfather’s potato candy, a strange-sounding mix of mashed potatoes, powdered sugar, and peanut butter that “just melts in your mouth.” Those aren’t just nostalgia items; they are a blueprint for how she cooks now—taking humble, even suspicious ingredients, and pushing them into something people did not expect to love.

Scallops with roasted beets

Chef Briana Mansberger The Wine Kitchen Frederick Maryland Steak.jpg

She took that curiosity to Indiana University of Pennsylvania, earning degrees in Culinary Arts and Baking & Pastry. The pastry side still shows up in her approach to the line. “Baking and pastry have also taught me a lot more patience when cooking, with the techniques being more meticulous,” she says, which is another way of saying she values restraint as much as flourish.

Butcher’s Flight

Chef Briana Mansberger The Wine Kitchen Frederick Maryland pasta

Gluten-free casarecce

Professionally, she leveled up in two defining kitchens. She joined The Wine Kitchen in 2018 as a sous chef under chef Jeff Beard, then moved to Voltaggio Brothers Steakhouse at MGM National Harbor as executive sous chef, where the standards are high and the volume does not stop. She credits both experiences with sharpening her leadership. “Both of the kitchens taught me responsibility and hard work,” she says, and just as importantly, “hospitality to the guests we serve.”

Crab cake sandwich

In 2024, she returned to The Wine Kitchen and stepped into the executive chef role, with a style she describes as “American-French with an upscale comfort food twist.” On the menu, that can look like a chicken Milanese that borrows the idea of cordon bleu: a thin breaded cutlet wrapped with country ham, fried crisp, served over sautéed spinach, then finished with Swiss mornay foam and a garnish of crispy garlic and chives. “It’s a little bit of comfort on a plate,” she says, and it lands like the point of her whole career: familiar enough to trust, precise enough to feel new.

Almond cake

Her favorite victories are the ones that happen at the table when diners surprise themselves. She recently put on a gluten free vegan pasta—casarecce with honeynut squash sauce, charred scallion pumpkin seed chili crunch, black garlic, and puffed spinach—and watched people avoid it on principle. “Most people shy away from it because it’s gluten free and it’s a ‘healthy’ dish,” she says, “but it comes with balance and umami,” and now diners add proteins to it like they’re trying to claim it as their own idea.

And if you trace that confidence back far enough, it still leads to the same place it started: a Chambersburg kitchen table where dinner meant everyone has a spot.