Home Plates

Cynthia Graubart studied journalism at UGA and earned her master’s degree in broadcast management at the University of Florida in Gainesville; one of her first gigs out of school was producing Nathalie Dupree’s PBS series 'New Southern Cooking' in 1985.

These easy slice-and-bake cookies melt in your mouth. Brazil nuts, now found bagged and shelled in many grocery stores, give them a distinctive flavor, but pecans, almonds, or other nuts can be substituted.

s a child, King’s military family was always on the move. But wherever they lived—Virginia, Missouri, Hawaii—her grandmother, Mildred King, came for extended visits, bringing the flavors of Georgia with her. “Ganky” (as King called her) was revered for her layer cakes and pecan tassies. But the dessert that King most remembers is a simple, delicate coconut custard.

Every holiday, Tony Morrow gathers with thirty or so family members at his mother and stepfather’s house for a massive feast that includes turkey and cornbread stuffing with giblet gravy, baked ham, chitterlings, collards, macaroni and cheese, cranberry sauce, and Irons’s signature sweet potato souffle—a creamy, nutmeg-spiced casserole thickly blanketed with a candy-sweet topping of coconut and pecans.

Jay Swift, chef-owner of 4th & Swift, and his son Jeb Aldrich, chef de cuisine at 4th & Swift, are Baltimore natives with fond memories of weekend fishing trips on Chesapeake Bay and raucous get-togethers around picnic tables piled high with freshly steamed blue crabs.

Long before Roberts learned how to toy with foie gras under Guenter Seeger, another mentor showed him moves in the kitchen: his mom, Jean Roberts. Today, some of her best creations—like her creamy macaroni and cheese—are signatures at Community Q.

Joshua Hopkins, executive chef and co-owner of Abattoir, has built his reputation around utilizing whole animals in his cooking, crafting dishes like tripe noodle soup and duck rillettes. His upbringing prepared him well.

The whippoorwill tattooed on Jerry Slater’s left forearm pays tribute to the birds his grandmother admired in the mountains of rural West Virginia where Slater, owner of H. Harper Station, was raised.

Nygren entered the kitchen almost as soon as she was born. Her mother, Margaret Lupo, became pregnant with her in 1959, three years after Lupo opened her first restaurant, Margaret’s Tray Shop, in downtown Atlanta. In 1962 Lupo became the proprietress of Mary Mac’s Tea Room, and over the next couple of decades she turned the meat-and-three restaurant into an Atlanta icon.