Home Plates

Sonya Jones is the owner of Sweet Auburn Bread Company and the author of "Sweet Auburn Desserts: Atlanta’s Little Bakery That Could." Desserts were always in the house, and Jones often had a hand in baking peach and blackberry cobblers or apple pie.

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.

Dinners at the suburban home of Ford Fry, chef-owner of JCT Kitchen and No. 246, typically revolve around the Big Green Egg perched on the spacious deck in back. What emerges from the ceramic smoker takes him back to gatherings he attended as a youth at his grandfather’s ranch outside of Houston.

Suzanne Vizethann was practically raised on creamed corn in her childhood home in Buckhead, just five miles from her breakfast and lunch restaurant, Buttermilk Kitchen. The canned variety served as the base for the corn fritters her dad would fry up for family dinners.

Jason Hill, chef-owner of Wisteria, used to gripe about leaving his Atlanta friends behind to spend weekends at his grandparents’ house in Ellijay—especially in the summertime.

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.

Dixie Winfrey, a caterer, traveled to France and learned how to master velouté (a velvety “mother sauce” made with a butter-based roux) after having it served over squash blossoms. Back home, she tried the same sauce technique over the actual squash, which she simmered just enough to retain some of its crunch.

Joe Truex, the executive chef at Watershed on Peachtree, hails from Mansura, Louisiana—the heart of food-obsessed, French-speaking Cajun country. The youngest of seven kids in a Catholic family, Truex was weaned on crawfish bisque, coush-coush, and gumbo served alongside a baked sweet potato.

For a lot of folks, the mention of tomato aspic brings one word to mind: Ewww. This is not lost on executive chef Carvel Grant Gould, who wouldn’t dream of putting a congealed salad on the menu at Canoe, the upscale Vinings restaurant where she’s worked since it opened sixteen years ago.

A native of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Evans moved to Atlanta to helm the kitchen at Buckhead’s now-defunct Craftbar. His focus at the Optimist is seafood, but he still craves the earthier Southern comfort foods of home: his mom’s biscuits and gravy, his grandmother’s chicken and dumplings, and most of all, North Alabama chicken stew.