(suspenseful instrumental music) - [Taria] The act of molding new and imaginative ideas into reality is the very essence of creativity.

It is characterized by the ability to perceive the world in new ways, to make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena.

Whether you're creating a recipe, a menu, a restaurant, the process is exactly the same, dreaming then doing it.

(upbeat instrumental music) Atlanta is still becoming a city that dreams.

(upbeat instrumental music) Dreams new social structures, new systems of commerce.

It's also a city of hustlers.

And sometimes everyone is so involved in the hustle that we forget to step back to see how far we still have to go, (upbeat instrumental music) and to see how far we've come.

(soft instrumental music) (dramatic instrumental music) (dramatic instrumental music continues) (dramatic instrumental music continues) (mellow instrumental music) - Atlanta's food scene is vastly underrated, and this has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time.

We needed to have something that would document where Atlanta is today, and felt that a cookbook might be the path forward.

(mellow instrumental music) - We have a diversity that just really is showcased through the way that we come together at the table, and we felt like we could tell that story through these people, through Chef Taria Camerino, because she really understands the chefs.

She knows how that looks in a book.

- So, when I was asked, when I was asked to do the cookbook for Atlanta, I was immediately like, "Yeah, I got this.

This is gonna be something that is easy."

And so, I had these ideas of a book, and I knew exactly what it was gonna be.

And I would just call up my friends, and I'd put a book together.

That was not what happened at all.

(gentle instrumental music) I did have an assumption that the chefs were gonna give me their best work, and I was gonna just put it all together and it was gonna be easy.

The first thing I noticed was they weren't giving me their best work.

When you're given a recipe that you know just isn't quite good enough or quite perfect, how do you then tell your colleagues?

Because I know the industry here in Atlanta so well, and I also move through the industry in a particular way.

I push, push, push, and I know what chefs are capable of here.

(bright instrumental music) (smooth instrumental music) Carla Fears is a chef that pushes a lot of boundaries.

- I want to make food that the world can feel, so the world feels my soul.

- [Taria] As a Black, queer, female chef, she doesn't subscribe to any of the boxes that I think most people would put her in.

- When Taria asked me to be a part of the cookbook I was, I was excited honestly, like because as a Black girl and just trying to make my mark nobody really acknowledges you like that.

(smooth instrumental music) - So, I think we should add charcoal.

So, when we were in the process of developing the dish for the book I saw it.

When she presented it it had three scallops, it was small.

What I saw was the potential.

Honestly, that was the first time she had done the dish, so it makes sense that it wasn't fine-tuned at all.

- She was like, "Hey, I want you to be in here because you have a story to tell and I see it.

And I want everybody to hear it."

- I knew there was a story there that you need other peers that are just as talented or more so to push you.

And so, I went looking for a perfect dish for that.

(calm instrumental music) You are plating.

- All right, so I'm gonna plate this dish.

(rhythmic instrumental music) - We get here and she's plating in it, and it's just so crammed in.

(rhythmic instrumental music) Like there was no space for her to communicate anything.

No, no, no, no.

- Why?

- It's too small.

- Okay.

- We need more space.

I was totally wrong.

I missed the mark.

Do you want to try this plate?

Doing the first 80% of a dish is, they're all talented.

Of course they can do that.

But the extra 20% to get to great is the hardest part because it requires you to break.

So, we tried another dish, she picked another dish.

And it gave more space, but it wasn't big enough.

You think that looks good?

- No, all right.

- I can always try another plate.

And I was like, "I know we can get there."

(relaxing instrumental music) So, then when we chose this last dish, there was so much space for her to talk.

(soothing instrumental music) - Even from just the cut of the ginger to the Thai chilies, to the basil oil, everything that I plate up, it's me on the plate.

Like that's all I want to show.

(lively instrumental music) (lively instrumental music continues) Once I saw my before and my after dish, (lively instrumental music) it was like night and day.

(camera clicking) (lively instrumental music) (soft instrumental music) - So, we call this a cookbook, but it's really more of a coffee table cookbook.

Normally, when you pick up a cookbook there's a dish and a recipe on the same spread, two-facing pages, so you can reference one another at the same time.

But that's not how this book works.

- Chefs read recipes very differently than the home cook.

You know, we just, "Oh, look at those ingredients."

See the image, kind of might skim it.

- And it had to be more than just pictures of food.

This had to be telling a story.

(upbeat instrumental music) - [Melissa] So, when you flip through the pages you see the visuals first, and that's telling your story.

First, you're taking in the beauty of the book, and then you get to the recipes and find that matching number so you can flip back.

- We broke it down into pieces so that they could just tackle segments of that recipe if they wanted, or they can flip through it and say, "I really wanna make that chimichurri."

- The book had to have really high quality photography.

- The main reason for that is because this isn't my story to tell.

Atlanta is bold and vibrant.

- But we didn't want to have photography that looked the same as pretty much every other cookbook.

- I needed someone that was coming to this from a different perspective.

(relaxing instrumental music) (camera clicking) I chose to work with Brittany Wages to do photography for the book because her voice was fresh.

In her work I saw the capacity to grab something, to pull something out.

(soothing instrumental music) - We've shot a lot of the photography in Taria's studio here in Castleberry Hill.

- A lot of artists were moving in because there was all this warehouse space, so it became a really heavy art community.

(melodic instrumental music) So, when I really dove into understanding what this story was going to look like, you have one image to tell the story of a chef, right?

So, it's not just the plate, it's what the plate rests on.

What the background looks like is the story.

(melodic instrumental music) (vibrant instrumental music) We went to El Tesoro to capture four shots, two cocktails and two dishes.

- Which I go to for brunch tacos as often as I can.

- I'm really excited about it.

We're not just trying to capture a chef, we're trying to capture the entire essence of a space and walking through and looking for the most ideal location to really capture that.

- [Andrew] The chair is perfect.

- Brittany translating my vision in this shoot was definitely more challenging because we didn't have as many tools.

- [Brittany] So, right now Taria is rebuilding some tacos and pozole.

- Hey, can I get some onions that are sliced like thin rather than chopped?

- Julienne?

- Yeah, julienne would be perfect, thank you.

I'm styling on the fly, and trying not to be offensive.

(soft instrumental music) (camera clicking) (soft instrumental music) Putting it on top of the chair, and it made all of the other colors that I did add to the top pop.

You know, I mean, we're shooting a dish literally around the corner of the restaurant on the sidewalk to capture the essence of the restaurant.

That's also, I'm always kind of fascinated and excited when that happens where I'm just like, "Let me just see where this goes."

(upbeat instrumental music) (camera clicking) I used a lot of floors because they're so weathered.

They have a worn quality to them.

(upbeat instrumental music) (camera clicking) I was surprised, like from when I got it to where we ended up, it was night and day for sure.

(uplifting instrumental music) Atlanta can't really be judged by the same lens that you look at any other city in the world, and that's because of its history in racism.

♪ A helping hand ♪ Creativity often thrives under limitation.

I think that's probably when people become the most creative is when they have a will pushed against them that isn't theirs.

♪ It's gonna help me stand ♪ ♪ It's gonna help me stand ♪ So, when I started doing this deep dive into the food story there were some common threads that were coming up, and that was equality, resource allocation.

Who was succeeding in the restaurant industry, who was not.

I couldn't find that many Black chefs, certainly Black women, right?

So, I'm looking and I'm digging, even though I've been in this industry, I'm still like looking and I'm noticing this thread.

And from there I had to start looking at history.

I had to go back in time to discover how we got here.

(soft piano music) - What's great about restaurants, and particularly Busy Bee, is that it's familiar and familial.

You feel like this is part of your family but the food is familiar to you, and you can be placed in a setting where you can actually have a discussion.

- [Taria] And when I had the opportunity to meet with Karcheik, and she just opened this world up to me about the history of Atlanta and the Civil Rights Movement.

(soft piano music) (people chatting) All of a sudden all these pieces started to piece together.

- And so, it's so important for people to tell their own history.

I'm such an advocate of people being the narrator of their own stories.

- Learning about the oldest restaurants in Atlanta, Busy Bee being one of them.

(soft piano music) - The original Busy Bee location is, sits on the outskirts of Downtown Atlanta, maybe a mile out.

And it's important because it's the only business that started during segregation that still exists.

- When the Civil Rights Movement began to gain momentum during World War II, this became a place for people to convene.

- The Civil Rights Movement was the first time that Atlanta pushed back against that type of oppression.

(soft piano music) What that means is that that's when Atlanta started cooking, right?

There's this other thing happening.

Who was feeding these revolutionaries?

- And when you begin to learn about other restaurants that would come afterwards, it's actually from this tradition of people using restaurants as a place to gather, no different than churches or civic organizations.

(people chatting) (soft piano music) - And so, meeting there and learning about the history of Busy Bee and Tracy's commitment to continuing the legacy of what that restaurant really means for the community, it was a powerful experience for me.

- I feel that we, as African Americans, we don't take our history serious.

The people that went before us to pave the way that we could do what we do, and we're able to continue it is so important to me.

It's extremely important because it's like hey, everything you did, I'm continuing it.

It's not vanishing because you're not here.

You are important Mr. Lucy.

You are important James Paschal.

You are important Robert Paschal's, you are important to me.

- [Brittany] It was a powerful experience for me (camera clicking) to learn about the food and why she's still making (camera clicking) the style of food that she is, (camera clicking) and why she's decided to stay (camera clicking) in that location and not leave.

(people chatting) - I don't know.

How did we get to the Civil Rights Movement?

And how did these businesses-- - Well, there were a number of things, yeah.

So, there was-- - 'Cause she, she's a wealth of knowledge.

She's like an encyclopedia.

She's dropping names like this, right?

This person, this person, she's dropping all these names.

And then she mentions Evelyn Frazier.

(soft piano music) - Mrs. Jones Frazier actually established a restaurant in the 1930s initially.

- I've never heard of her, who's Evelyn Frazier?

- She had some business challenges with a previous partner, and then she decides to go into business on her own.

- So, I immediately am looking for information.

Nothing, I can't find anything on this woman.

- So, this particular story was intriguing, like who is Evelyn Frazier, what is Frazier Cafe Society?

We've heard about Busy Bees.

We've heard about Paschal's and the Paschal's Brothers.

And so, we know a lot about those stories, but this is one we had never heard.

- But somewhere along the way her husband actually received a lot of the credit for the work, and so her restaurant becomes known as Frazier Cafe.

- I read some obituaries about her and the impact that she had on her community, and then I just kept digging and digging.

I found my way to the Evelyn Frazier Foundation.

And it turns out that her niece, Pennye, heads that up.

She runs it.

(upbeat rhythmic music) - [Karcheik] What is really special about her restaurant is that it's the first interracial restaurant that was established on Hunter Street during the period of Jim Crow segregation.

- A White fellow said, "Can you serve our people?

We'll go in the back, and your people in the front."

I said, "If you want to come now, you can come, but nobody will take away from my people.

You will eat with my people."

- Auntie was a big part of the Civil Rights Movement.

So, here she is at the restaurant with Ralph Bunche and a group of people that were meeting.

Auntie was very regal, very beautiful.

She loved clothes, and she was able to make many of her, the blouses and the hats.

(upbeat rhythmic music) - [Taria] I met Pennye at Refuge Coffee, which is on historic Auburn Avenue.

It's a coffee shop that's committed to supporting African immigrants.

And she came with all of this stuff for me to see, all these photographs.

- And you can see the menu really, - I know.

- Yeah, it's, I mean, similar items as we have today.

It's just that the prices were different.

- The menu is, for the time, was so forward thinking, especially for the South.

I mean, there are dishes on that menu that you can find in restaurants today.

- Here is her, this would be her breakfast menu.

- So, she was open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?

- She was open all day long from seven in the morning to 12.

- Mrs. Frazier actually went to New York to see Lena Horne perform when she was living in Harlem.

And while she was there she began to see that you had these beautiful restaurants that Blacks and Whites were able to patronize.

And so, Ms. Frazier actually wanted to bring that to Atlanta.

(upbeat melodic music) - [Taria] Pennye brought all of these, all these letters, (upbeat melodic music) from presidents and congressmen.

(upbeat melodic music) We walked over to the Municipal Market, a Sweet Auburn Market, and I really wanted to go there with Pennye to just kind of see what she could share with me.

- Their farm was at least 38 acres, and it really never dawned on me at that time, 'cause this was in the '50s.

- Right.

- It really didn't dawn on me at that time that this was substantial for their business.

(energetic music) - There's all of this produce everywhere, and Pennye shared with me her memories as a child spending on the farm.

- This just reminds me of the farm.

I remember at the restaurant, I remember the corn coming in and all of the corn being husked at one time.

(energetic music) - So, the farm-to-table movement has become very popular in the past 10, 20 years, but it's not new.

Evelyn wanted to have her own farm so she could have sovereignty, right?

So, she didn't, first of all, she didn't wanna ever buy canned foods.

She didn't like 'em.

She couldn't have any control in the kitchen that way.

She wanted her own farm to be able to maintain cost, to keep her menu affordable.

That was one of the biggest motivators that she had, was to make sure that her menu prices were affordable for her community.

(gentle instrumental music) It's extremely important to me to have Evelyn Frazier's Lemon Ice Box Pie in this book to make the act of her life relevant today.

(inspiring instrumental music) Apparently, Evelyn Frazier never wrote down a single recipe for her restaurant, so it required me to do a deep dive into the process.

(inspiring instrumental music) There was a lot of emotion that went into the process for me, really hoping that I could, I don't know.

I think whenever we cook we hope that we can create some kind of emotional response in the people that are eating it.

(inspiring instrumental music) Yeah, I wasn't sure if it would, if it required meringue, if they used meringue at Frazier's Cafe.

So, I had to ask Pennye to get her take.

Here trying to recreate the Lemon Ice Box Pie from the Frazier Cafe Society, and would it have meringue on top?

- It would, I do remember it having the meringue on top.

(inspiring instrumental music) - And so, for me to attempt to make the pie was my way of honoring her life, Pennye's life, the history of Atlanta.

It's really my only way of really truly kind of capturing what that is in the way I know best, which is through food.

(motivational instrumental music) - This is good, it really is good.

And I can go for a second.

No, it really is good, mm-hmm.

The pie that I tasted today really brought back a lot of memories, especially the meringue, with reference to the comfort that I think desserts bring in general.

But the Ice Box Lemon Pie was one that was made, even though the sugar was limited, but Auntie found a way to make sure that it was available.

And the one that we had today was great.

- Usually you know you succeeded if someone says, "That reminds me of, it makes me feel like," and you kind of know you did it, like if that's what happens, so.

(camera clicking) (vibrant instrumental music) Having the Lemon Ice Box Pie in the book for me was my way of bringing the past into the book today.

(riveting instrumental music) - The final product is coming to us today.

So, we are going to this great venue, King Plow Center, and we're going to do an unboxing with some champagne (cork popping) (uplifting instrumental music) and a little bit of food to eat, just as a way of saying thank you to the team for all the effort they've put into this project.

(uplifting instrumental music) (uplifting instrumental music continues) - Finally holding the book in my hands, it was more profound than I expected.

(exhilarating instrumental music) (exhilarating instrumental music continues) In my hand, and in print, in a tangible form, it almost felt like it's still not mine.

Like this wasn't made for me, this was made as a gift.

'Cause I think that it's a beautiful, talented, rich, diverse food scene, and that's really all I wanted to do was honor that.

(exhilarating instrumental music) (mellow piano music)