Photograph by Ben Rollins
It’s 11 a.m. at the Iberian Pig in Buckhead. Though the restaurant’s business hours haven’t started, cook Humbelina Heredia is in the kitchen, preparing an exclusive off-the-menu spread for a select few.
Before some of your favorite Atlanta restaurants open for service—especially on extra busy days—they provide a nourishing lunch for the staff. Famously known as a family meal, it is more than just food. It’s fuel for building community and furthering cultural education.
Many dinner-only restaurants have cooks and chefs come in as early as 8 a.m. to ready the ingredients for cooking the evening’s dishes. Other waves of kitchen staff come in throughout the day, many of them working 12 to 14 hours, without an opportunity to sit down and eat. “For many of us, this is the only meal we are going to have all day,” says executive chef Josué Peña of the Iberian Pig Buckhead. “It’s a free moment before we go into service.”
At some restaurants, the whole team gathers to eat together, while at others, the staff grabs and goes as their workload allows it. Kitchen staff members take turns preparing these meals, or in some cases, a designated captain takes responsibility.
The family meal is different at every restaurant, and not all restaurants offer it. In a May 2024 New York Times article, “At These Restaurants, Feeding the Staff Comes First,” Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Julia Moskin wrote, “Serving and sharing a meal before diners arrive is a long-standing tradition in the culinary world—at restaurants that can afford it.” Atlanta is no exception.
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Photograph by Ben Rollins
The Iberian Pig
“Humbe,” as they call Heredia at the restaurant, oversees family meals at the Iberian Pig Buckhead. “She is our kitchen mom,” says executive chef Peña as he sips on atole de avena, a warm oat milk drink Heredia prepared earlier. Combining the same ingredients used to prepare Spanish tapas at the restaurant, she crafts Mexican home-cooked meals. “I only cook things that I like and that I am craving,” Heredia says, as she blends a salsa verde with a daring amount of serrano peppers. “They like spicy food around here.”
Heredia moves on to make the thick chile guajillo sauce for the barbacoa de pollo (slow-cooked chicken in mild red sauce), and a fresh tomato sauce that will color the fluffy Mexican rice—all made from scratch. She learned to cook with her family while growing up in Guerrero, Mexico, and now perfects her recipes by watching cooking videos on YouTube. “It’s easy,” she says as she puts the soft, boiled tomatillos in the blender for the salsa verde. “You should learn.”
As the kitchen buzzes with staff prepping for service, Peña helps Heredia with the final touches. “She has her way of cooking,” he says, handing her the foil she uses to cover the rice for cooking. “I don’t always understand it, but I trust her.”
Once the food is ready, Peña sets it up in the private dining room as the staff gathers with plates and utensils. “She’s always feeding me,” jokes bartender Stephen Saylor, using his broken Spanish to ask Heredia about the dishes.
Around the table, the team starts to talk about what is left to do before service, but the conversation quickly turns into anecdotes about food and family when chef de cuisine Zachary Lanier gets a phone call. “My mother,” he says to the group with a sigh. They laugh and begin to talk about their own experiences growing up. No one is shy about grabbing seconds before heading back to the kitchen, thanking Heredia for another great family meal.
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Southern Belle and Georgia Boy
It’s 2:55 p.m. at Southern Belle, the Southern-rooted restaurant in the Poncey-Highland neighborhood. Inside, some of the staff are gathered around the biggest table in the dining room. There are laptops open and papers everywhere. Servers and bartenders move around the restaurant carrying silverware, wine bottles, and glasses. Although they
haven’t opened for the evening, the staff is busy.
Chef-owner Joey Ward pops in from the kitchen, announcing that family meal is ready. Workers head to the back of the restaurant, past the main dining room, where the intimate, Michelin-recommended Georgia Boy is located. The tucked-away venue, known for its 14-course Southern-inspired dinner experience steeped in nostalgia, is practically a big open kitchen.
There are five large aluminum pans with warm food set on one of the two communal tables where guests sit during service. The pans hold Indian-style basmati rice, butter chicken, grilled cabbage and greens, naan, and irresistible chocolate chip cookies. Ward and three other chefs prepared the meal, part of a rotating schedule that gives each kitchen member a chance to showcase their skills. “Everyone takes extra care because no one wants to embarrass themselves,” Ward says, digging into his plate.
Family meal is a tradition Ward learned from his time at Woodfire Grill and Gunshow. When hosting chef collaborations, where invited chefs work together to prepare food for customers, he’s known for ordering a favorite to feed the guest chefs and the staff: Fellini’s white pizza with mushrooms, sausage, garlic, and white truffle oil.
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Atlas
It’s an impressive sight to see more than 100 staff members gather for a family meal at Atlas, an elevated American food restaurant in Buckhead’s St. Regis Hotel. When 3 p.m. strikes each day, everyone, from chefs to bartenders, gathers at Atlas’s sister restaurant next door, the Garden Room. Surrounded by hundreds of flowers and plants in the whimsical garden, the team lines up to see who cooked what for family meal.
Three nervous and excited chefs stand behind the food table holding serving utensils. All three are foreign-exchange culinary students from different parts of the world, completing a one-year program. To showcase their diverse backgrounds, each was tasked with making a dish that reminded them of home.
Isabel Pérez made a traditional ceviche from Ecuador, prepared with lime juice, peanut butter, cilantro, avocado, and cucumber. The chopped shrimp, marinated in the lime juice mixture and topped with pickled onions, is served in the plastic quart containers often used in the kitchen. Jose Alonso Neira made an iconic street-food favorite from his native Peru, anticuchos—beef skewers marinated with aji panca (a mild red pepper with a smoky flavor), lime juice, cumin, oregano, and soy sauce. Siddhant Singh, from India, made butter chicken. “I have tried it here in Atlanta, and it never hits the mark,” says Singh. “I want to show you how it is really supposed to be.” With that promise of authenticity by all three chefs, the team lines up to be served. Seated at a crowded table, chef de cuisine Adam Hercik says, “We are in the business of feeding people, but we have to eat too.”
Prepared by a rotation of cooks, family meal becomes a cultural opportunity for the team to bond over food and broaden their culinary knowledge. The planning process starts a week in advance, and cooks incorporate ingredients left over after preparing dishes on the menu at Atlas. “One of our sustainability practices is using every part of the animal or produce we get,” says Hercik. “Family meal is an opportunity to do that.”
The Atlas team is big. In the kitchen alone there are 52 chefs and cooks who make possible the meticulous menu of this Michelin-star restaurant. Added to that are the servers, managers, bartenders, and sommeliers who complete the sophisticated experience. Despite the large number, they all sit down at the same time, to break bread.
In the dining room, teams from various parts of the restaurant naturally gravitate toward each other. Even with plenty of empty tables available, they prefer to pull up extra chairs until their one chosen table is completely full. After hours spent working on top of each other in tight confines, preparing food for service, the kitchen staff willingly choose to stay close-knit, even during family meals.
When the family meal is done, they collectively clean up and start preparing to welcome their guests.
This article appears in our February 2025 issue.
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