Tag: Jordan Chambers

The words adorable and European are never far from my mind when I walk into Larakin, the coffee shop and wine bar that opened late last year almost within sight of Piedmont Park. I climb a few opulent steps engraved with the names of the drinks that wait within—coffee, wine, latte—and suddenly I am in another culture.

Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Southern California, Mel Toledo enjoyed tinned fish regularly for dinner. “My mother would heat up a tin of sardines in tomato sauce and we’d eat it with rice,” says Toledo, who today is a co-owner of Foundation Social Eatery and Petite FSE in Alpharetta—and one of a growing number of chefs in the metro area celebrating the sophisticated joys of preserved seafood in small packages.