Chef · Restaurateur · Founder · Activist · Surfer · Mom
Forty years of building
things that last.
Jersey Shore native. Self-taught chef. Driven by the ocean, the community, and the belief that great food and great business should make the world better than they found it.
She grew up in Belmar. The ocean was her best friend. Everything else followed.
Marilyn Schlossbach is a self-taught chef, restaurateur, founder, and community activist whose work has shaped the Jersey Shore food and culture scene for more than four decades. Born and raised in Belmar, she has always been as much a product of this coastline as a builder of it.
Her culinary career began by accident in 1982. A cook did not show up at her brother's restaurant in Avon-by-the-Sea. She stepped in and never really stepped back out. From that night forward she has opened more than fifteen restaurants, transformed neighborhoods, fed communities through crisis, launched a nationally award-winning beauty brand, and remained one of the most authentic voices in New Jersey hospitality.
She travels the world on her surfboard and brings everything she finds back to the table. Menus inspired by surf trips to Nicaragua, France, and every coastline in between. Her food is honest, local, and deeply connected to place. So is everything else she builds.
Her latest chapter is Maree Kitchen + Bar in Spring Lake, the neighborhood bistro with a Cheers feeling she has been describing for thirty years, alongside Oshin Oil, the moringa-based beauty elixir born from a decade of quiet work in her kitchen and a surf trip that changed everything.
When she is not building something she is with her twin daughters Hari Mar and Rubi Dee, and her artist husband Scott Szegeski, living the Shore life that has always been her foundation.
A 120-year-old warehouse.
A living cultural institution.
Whitechapel Projects in Long Branch is one of the Shore's most singular cultural spaces. A 120-year-old warehouse with original beams salvaged from Andy Warhol's Factory, transformed into a communal center for food, drink, art, music, and events.
Marilyn has been a foundational part of Whitechapel's story from the beginning, helping shape what it is as a space and a community. Her connection runs deep and her commitment to what it stands for, adaptive reuse, the art in daily life, gathering, remains as strong as ever.
Visit whitechapelprojects.comThe work that runs alongside everything else.
Food For Thought By The Sea
Marilyn's nonprofit providing culinary job placement, surf lessons, community gardening, and environmental education. Delivered 3,000+ meals weekly during COVID. Free community holiday dinners every year since 2008.
foodforthoughtap.comEnvironmental Advocacy
Long-standing partnerships with Clean Ocean Action, Surfrider Foundation, the American Littoral Society, and Waves for Water. Collaboration on Asbury Park's Kula Urban Farm with Interfaith Neighbors.
Youth and Education
Community surf lessons and gardening with the Boys and Girls Club of Monmouth County. Executive board member of the NJ Restaurant and Hospitality Association. Board member at College Achieve Greater Asbury Park Charter School.
As seen and heard.
A selection of recent and notable coverage.
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