Between them they have 30 years of culinary experience, including at top Chicago restaurants Alinea, Tru and Charlie Trotter’s. It was at the latter that John Shields and Karen Urie Shields first met, he as a sous chef, she as head pastry chef. In 2008, the couple shifted gears, turning down an offer to open a Trotter restaurant in Las Vegas and instead headed to Smyth, a small county in Virginia. During their five years there, they honed their culinary vision using the locally grown ingredients around them as inspiration. In the process, their cooking at Town House and Riverstead Inn earned them national acclaim.