Ivan Solis stood behind his custom-made coffee cart in Candler Park on Saturday afternoon. It was the grand opening of Space Queen, a new vintage clothing store in the neighborhood. Thirty minutes before the celebration was scheduled to kick off, several people were already hovering around him, hoping to be his first customer.

They had good reason. Ivan is no ordinary barista, and no ordinary businessman. He’s the founder of Recuerdos, a pop-up coffee business he started in 2022, that seems to serve a dual purpose: specializing in carefully sourced Mexican coffees, and, serving as a “love letter to our immigrant families.”

With the precision of a surgeon (his parents thought he would go to medical school), he made one drink at a time. For each individual cup, he ground fresh whole beans, sourced from a farm in Veracruz, Mexico. He measured the coffee, then pushed down on the ground beans with a multicolored wooden tamper. Small glass cups collected the espresso, that he then poured into paper cups or clear glasses, and mixed with steamed milk, or not, depending on the drink.  Ivan stood there for five hours with zen - like concentration. “I love people, I love sharing…I love doing this,” he said.

With his careful sourcing, immaculate tools, and customized drinks - it’s no surprise that Ivan has competed in a national barista championship. In a space that is generally not known for its diversity, Ivan is raising the profile of Mexican coffee, which he says is underrepresented, and sometimes misunderstood, in the world of artisanal coffee. The beans he was using on Saturday were sourced from his friend Marlen Mendoza of Amanezer Co, a small batch coffee company in Texas. “It has nice notes of melon, honeysuckle,” different from the chocolatier and nutty flavors Mexican coffee is traditionally associated with, he said.

The artisanal coffee scene is a far cry from the world of his parents, who Ivan said, don’t quite get his business.

“My mom…she drinks decaf. And my dad doesn't drink coffee. He's more of a Coca Cola type,” he said. “So it's kind of weird how I ended up loving coffee.”

Still, their imprints are all over his business. His parents emigrated from Aguascualientes, Mexico in 1995, where “a lot of my family [were] entrepreneurs…they owned little shops.” His dad comes from a family of farmers.

Once they got to Georgia though, his father worked in construction and his mom worked in schools. As a kid, Ivan never realized how hard it had been for them. “My parents tried to love me as much as [they could] and gave me whatever they could, so that I couldn’t feel the struggles that they would later explain to me…that's how much they loved me that I never really saw that.” 

One of Recuerdos' signature drinks, “madre,'' is made with single origin chocolate from Chiapas that he sources from another Latinx small business owner in Texas. It's a tribute to his mom and his obsession with Abuelitas chocolate tablets as a kid. “She used to hide them and I had to go to the top shelf to grab them. She’d find me and I’d be like covered, my mouth full of chocolate,” he said, smiling. “She’s just awesome.”

Ivan grew up in the Lithonia - Decatur area, very different, he said, from “barrios” in places like New York and California where Latinos have been living for generations and “where people can literally walk to each other [and] support each other's business.” 

 “There's nothing like that here in Atlanta… I think that still people are trying to find how to do that. Because you have these communities kind of like branched out, there's not really a space for all of us to come together.”

That’s why Ivan’s ultimate vision for Recuerdos is to create a  “third space”.

“You'll have like a typical construction worker come in and then you'll have like a businessman there in the same place,” he said, describing what it would look like. “So we'll have people, just from different walks of life, come in and share coffee and talk to each other and communicate.”

On Saturday, more customers began to gather. One told Ivan about a regular gathering for creative entrepreneurs in Atlanta, another asked him about the meaning of Recuerdos. (It means “memories”). Children ordered hot chocolates. 

It looked like his hope of a space that brings people together, through coffee, was already starting to happen.

Recuerdos will be at the Morningside Farmer’s Markets on Saturdays, starting April 6. To find out about future pop-ups and the latest drinks, follow Recuerdos on Instagram.

Sandwiched between a Chevron gas station on Church Street, and I-285 exit 40, glowing neon lights flash different colors, beckoning diners into Darbar Halal. 

The family owned Afghan restaurant, which opened its doors this week, is run by Baseer Basil, an artist and a businessman, who also owns the nearby Kabul Market on Lawrenceville Highway. He had been renting the space for over a year, but because of licensing and permits, it took a while to welcome customers.  

“Do you know Dekalb County? It is very slow,” he said, laughing, standing outside the restaurant front on Thursday. “Every inspection takes two months, three months.”

Baseer’s son Hamza was working the front counter. He said his dad felt the need to launch Darbar Halal because there was no Afghan restaurant in the Clarkston, Stone Mountain, or Decatur area. The aim is to serve a fast growing population, with hundreds arriving since the 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. 

“A lot of Afghanis, they reside here in Clarkston. [It’s]walking distance for them to just come in and have something.”

But since opening, he says it isn’t only Afghans who have been coming.

“I've had a lot of Somalis, Ethiopians, and Syrians. There's a large community of Muslims here, and especially, we have a mosque right down the street.”

Right now, the menu is limited to kabuli pulao, the national dish of Afghanistan, which is rice cooked with carrots, raisins, and marinated lamb, as well as a mix of kabobs including beef koobideh, chopan (lamb), and chicken tikka. Baseer’s wife cooks the meat in the back kitchen over hot coals, and a chef who owned restaurants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, stirs a giant metal pot of the rice.  

The dining space is small with walls painted bright red and orange, and a handful of tables. The plan is to expand the menu - and the space - in the coming weeks. Hamza said an updated menu will include bolanis (a pan-fried flatbread stuffed with potatoes), aushak (steamed dumplings filled with chives and topped with tomato sauce and yogurt), karahis (chicken, lamb, or beef cooked with tomatoes, onions, and spices), as well as wings and halal pizza. He also said a juice bar was on the horizon, “with pistachios, almonds, walnuts - everything from Afghanistan.” 

For the attached dining hall, which is at least three times the size of the current restaurant, Baseer has big plans. It now sits empty, but there are pencil drawings on the floor - mapping out his plans to fill it with his original artwork, a stage, and Afghan rugs and cushions - so it can be a space for weddings and events. 

“I want my restaurant natural Afghani. Afghani carpet, Afghan food. So in Darbar restaurant, you feel you’re in a Kabul restaurant,” he said.  

For years it has been Baseer’s dream to open an Afghan restaurant. 

On Thursday evening, as he watched over several Afghan patrons spooning heaps of kabuli pulao onto their plates, and cutting into kebobs, that dream was beginning to become reality. 

The jollof rice at Le Nouveau Maquis is so spicy your ears will be ringing and eyes will be  watering after just a few bites. The grilled lamb served along with it is both tender and peppery. And the Egusi soup, made with ground melon seeds, sounds mild, but is a shock to the uninitiated palate (newcomers: go for the peanut soup! ). But the food alone isn’t what makes the family-owned West African restaurant on Memorial Drive unique.  

Twenty-six-year-old Fabiola Agbale co-runs the restaurant with her mother, Fanta. The current location has been up and running for the past three years, and before that, it was housed inside the African and International Market, just down the road. Together, the mother - daughter duo have created a rare space in Metro Atlanta - one that pays homage to their Togolese roots, but is also firmly planted in the present -  in the ever-diverse strip of Memorial Drive in Stone Mountain. 

The decor of Le Nouveau is testament to that: a portrait of Fanta hangs by the front door, painted by Fabiola’s Congolese friend who lives in the area. On the other side of the entrance is a wall filled with baskets of different sizes and shapes - some, says Fabiola, that she brought here from Togo, and some that she bought at the local Home Goods. 

The dishes are served with utensils that are tucked into cloth pockets, handmade by her aunt who lives in Togo, as are the maroon and white outfits the servers are wearing. On another wall are wooden masks that Fabiola says she bought from Amazon, next to paintings from Togolese artists, including her own uncle. 

Fabiola wants Le Nouveau to feel like home, not only for fellow immigrants from Togo (“we are a small country…so we’re a small community,” she says), but for immigrants from other parts of West Africa. “I stay away from saying that it's a Togolese only restaurant, because you want everybody to feel included in the food and the restaurant.” 

Between 2000 and 2019, the population of immigrants from Africa grew by over 200 percent nationwide. In Metro Atlanta, the Black immigrant population - which includes people from Africa, as well as Central America, South America, and the Caribbean - has grown by  165 percent.

That growth is visible on Memorial Drive - which is full of businesses owned and run by immigrants from Africa.There’s Somali Plaza, a shopping center that includes a halal pizza joint, multiple bazaars selling traditional clothing, and the office of the Somali American Community Center. There’s also Meskel Ethiopian restaurant and Queen Sheba bakery, also Ethiopian, among others. And there are African grocery stores, where Fabiola shops for ingredients (she also sources ingredients directly from Togo), like Maria Africa Market and African and International Market. 

At Le Nouveau, the menu’s offerings cater to immigrants from West Africa, but are also enjoyed by a wider customer base. It includes popular Senegalese dishes like thieboudien, a jollof rice prepared with fish, broken rice, and vegetables and chicken yassa, braised chicken with mustard sauce and onions. The cassava leaf soup, says Fabiola, is cooked in a style popular with Liberians and Sierra Leoneans “because this is one of the foods they eat the most.” And the turkey tail, and okra, also on the menu, are common in Togo. 

She’s careful to point out though, that there’s a lot of overlap throughout the region. “In West Africa…because of colonization, a lot of places were divided even though they were one before.” She adds, “the ground melon seeds are actually found everywhere. So we all cook it. We may cook it differently. So we all use the seed and we all add vegetables of some sort to it.”

Fabiola’s dream is to build an African restaurant franchise across the country. “Let's say you end up in a state, like Utah or Nebraska…there’s nothing for you to feel at home with, nothing for you to connect with. You need a home…just something to tie you a little bit and just to help you progress forward.”

She doesn’t see the franchise happening anytime soon though. “I have time. I’m only 26…to put in the groundwork, I have time.” 

When asked if she misses Togo she says, “Of course I miss home, but home is here too.” She adds, smiling, “I’m as Atlanta as it gets.”

Samina Sattar stood on a stage in the event hall of the Alif Institute one evening in April for an iftar fundraiser. Set out on a table in front of her was an unlikely mix of ingredients: shrimp, heirloom tomatoes, juices from lemons, limes, and oranges, a deep fried hollowed out ball (known as fuchka, or pani puri), tamarind chutney, and pani puri masala (a spice mix that includes dried mango, black salt, and chili). 

After breaking their fast with a traditional South Asian meal of chicken korma and biryani, members of the audience watched Sattar demonstrate how to make something unlike anything they just ate: “ceviche fuchka.” The fuchka, which is traditionally served by filling it with a mixture of chickpeas and/or potatoes - was instead filled with a tangy ceviche.

“It was delicious,” said Yasmeen Fareedudin, who had driven down from Roswell to attend the iftar with her husband. 

By day, Sattar is a speech therapist at a Buford Highway based clinic that serves mostly immigrant children who face challenges in articulation, social skills, stuttering, and feeding and swallowing.

But after she clocks off work, she transforms into an inventive culinary artist in her Norcross kitchen, whipping up innovative dishes such as gulab jamun cheesecakes, samosa shepherd's pie, and doodh patti glazed chai cookies.

These recipes are a far cry from the offerings of restaurants she frequents along Jimmy Carter Boulevard in Norcross, like Karachi Broast and Grill, Kabab King, Mughals, Dil Bahar Cafe (“those are my spots!) - all of which serve classic Pakistani dishes. And there seems to be a growing customer base for her creativity - Sattar has been developing a loyal following through her Instagram page, The Feeding Therapist, her food pop-ups, and her dessert catering since 2019.

What struck me most about Sattar, who grew up in the Bangladeshi community in Chamblee (a community which has grown to at least 6,000 in Metro Atlanta as of 2019), was how she saw a natural connection between her work as a speech therapist, and her passion to spread joy through food. At the iftar that evening, she was moved to tears, describing her grandmother’s speech challenges, which made it difficult for her to chew food. Sattar was determined to create recipes that she could enjoy in the last days of her life. 

I spoke to her about that connection, her Bangladeshi origins, and growing up in restaurants. 

Tell us about yourself.  

I was born in New York, but I spent most of my life in Georgia. My parents came to the U.S. as Bangladeshi immigrants. My dad was the first to come to the U.S., and he worked hard to get my mom to join him. He waited tables at restaurants in New York and could barely afford anything. Our family eventually moved to Atlanta, where my dad got the opportunity to start his own restaurant. This was a game-changer for our family and made us all foodies. 

What kinds of foods did you grow up eating at home?

Growing up, my family stayed true to our Bangladeshi roots, and Bangladeshi food was always on the table for lunch and dinner. A typical meal consisted of a spread with rice, a protein in curry form, and a vegetable dish. We ate with our hands, which I believe is the best way to enjoy a meal. One of my favorite things growing up was spending time at my family's restaurant. I would feast on fresh tandoori chicken, pilau, and naan any way I wanted. Sometimes I would choose garlic, other times cheese, and sometimes sweet naan. When it was time to eat at school, I used to wish my mom's delicious home-cooked food would stay at home. I was insecure that my classmates would find it weird, and some of them did. 

As I got older, I regretted not owning up to my love for my mom's food. I wish I had appreciated it more back then. Some of my favorite dishes cooked by my mom include spicy and sour curry with fish eggs, chicken korma, beef or goat tehari, aloo bhortha, begun bhaja, and fried hilsa fish. 

Bangladeshi food plays a huge role in my journey as a chef because I think it is very underrepresented and I make that assessment by noticing my dad and uncles' decisions in running Indian restaurants with North Indian cuisines. While it's popular, I think it's also a missed opportunity to proudly share some of the unique flavors Bangladesh has to offer, and so I always try my best to highlight some of my favorite foods and flavors on my page.

What are some of those flavors?

One thing I actually find a lot in Bangladeshi cooking more than other South Asian or other cuisines is the use of mustard seeds and mustard oil. We use a lot of mustard oil for a certain dish that we have called bhorta. It’s a mash of roasted veggies that we are known for having it, like, multiple types of ways, and mustard oil is like the base of all of them.

There's a spice blend called panch phoron which is like a Bangladeshi five spice that we use a lot in our veggies or samosas or in potatoes for breakfast. I really like that blend.

What connection do you see between your work as a speech therapist and your passion for food?

So when it comes to feeding and swallowing, a lot of times when you age, your ability to swallow slows down or is impaired. Especially if you've had a stroke.

Right now I work with kids, but I have a goal of working with adults with feeding during end of life care. Because one of the last things you have that you can really enjoy is the ability to enjoy good food. And if your swallowing is impaired, it's really hard to enjoy foods. 

I really tried with my grandmother to stick with liquids for her or thick soup where it has this consistency of a custard or a pudding. It's not pleasant at all. I would try my best to make it enjoyable. Sometimes I would cook and sometimes my mom would cook and we were both pretty much taking care of her together. I actually developed this cookie butter for her to have for breakfast. I worked on making cookie butter using Parle-G biscuits. It was a nice, smooth consistency so that she could be able to swallow that and also just enjoy it. Like a little treat.

Another thing is, when I was in a high school, there were students with autism that I worked with, and we had a coffee shop in the building. And a lot of what I do is helping them have better social skills and learning how to greet people properly. And then at the same time, being able to multitask and follow multi- step directions. And then being able to, like, make appropriate eye contact with other people. So food is a very social experience.

I really hope one day if I open up my own coffee shop, or a bakery, I'd love to hire adolescents or adults with disabilities. And we can work on some of those skills while they're serving other people.

What are some of your favorite recipes?

I get really excited when flavors are really working together. I have a friend who's from Spain and she had cooked some things before that I really love traditional Spanish foods —like a Spanish omelet, and Pan con Tomate, which is really elevated tomato on bread. She emphasized the importance of using a really good tomato and she was like, you can't find good tomatoes in the U.S.  I was like, dang, maybe I need to start growing some tomatoes. So I started growing tomatoes. Instead of pan con tomate, I made tomato bhorta, which Bengalis make. You roast the tomato on a pan, dry, with no oil, and you get it nice and charred. And then you take off the skin and mash it up and add garlic, onions, chilis and mustard oil. I tried that with some toast and I loved it. But I think some Bengalis would say this is crazy because you're supposed to eat it with rice. But it really worked. I felt like it was a Bangladeshi bruschetta.

And the other thing I had was a Spanish omelet. I decided to combine two traditional breakfast dish Bangladeshi dishes, which is what we call Dim Vaji, which just means fried egg, and then Aloo Bhaji, which is fried potatoes. And  the fried potatoes are usually prepared where you cut them up like hash browns,  and then you add turmeric, and then the Bangladeshi five spice, panch phoron. I ended up cutting the potatoes like you would for a Spanish omelet. And then I followed the steps for a Spanish omelet using what we would put in the Bangladeshi omelet- cilantro, green chilies, onions. My family had it and they were like wow, this is super good.

What’s the future for Chef Samina?

Occasionally I'll send out something on my Instagram story and say okay for this weekend only, I'm taking dessert orders. What generally happens is I'll have to make almost 200 desserts within a day. It gets a little overwhelming for me. I think I've reached a point where if I want to continue this, I have to get a commercial kitchen and get a staff. But I also really love the idea of doing pop ups and I'm feeling like I'm leaning more towards pop ups and doing classes or demos.

Do you have any advice for others who want to explore their passion for food? 

I would have told my younger self, don't ever be embarrassed about food if you like something. Don't listen to people who think it's weird, because their opinion doesn't matter. You like what you like. And chances are, if you like it, there are going to be other people that like it too. I learned that the more that I shared about some of our cooking techniques, I realized that it's not universal in South Asia. There are certain ingredients that are not universal. So it's kind of a way of learning. It's a nice way to get to know other people's cultures and to not be afraid.

You can follow Chef Samina Sattar, aka The Feeding Therapist, on Instagram here.

And stay tuned for Canopy Atlanta’s upcoming Norcross Issue, where we’ll learn about the people, places, and issues in this incredibly diverse part of Metro Atlanta.

In Forest Park, aromas with origins from more than 1,700 miles away emanate from a restaurant sandwiched between an Auto Repair and a Pizza Hut. Taqueria Don Sige #2 opened its doors in Forest Park four years ago, and ever since, has been drawing locals and customers from as far away as Marietta and Stockbridge for its birria tacos, chilaquiles, and tamales, as well as harder to find dishes like pozole (a traditional stew made with meat, spices, and vegetables) and aguachile (a ceviche-style shrimp tossed in chile water, served only on weekends). 

On a Wednesday afternoon, a steady stream of customers, reflecting the diverse makeup of Forest Park, which is 23 percent Hispanic and 50 percent African American, make their way in and out of the restaurant. Some arrive in pickup trucks for carryout, some are clad in U.S. Army uniforms and settling in for a meal of birria tacos, and others are clear regulars, ordering their food quickly and with confidence.

“We have people that say they come from an hour away. There's this other customer that we have, that comes from like two hours away,” says Melissa Rodriguez, the mastermind behind the restaurant’s ever-evolving menu and daughter of owner Sigifredo Rodriguez, the namesake of the restaurant. “There are places in Marietta that sell the birria tacos, but customers say they’re just not the same.”

Melissa was born in Atlanta, but learned how to cook from her father, older sister and mother. She grew up visiting her grandmother in their hometown in Villa de Emiliano Zapata, in the Mexican state of Jalisco, also the home of the birria taco. 

The taco - filled with slow cooked meat and dipped in a consomé - has become popular throughout cities in the U.S. in recent years (including Atlanta), but Melissa and her family have been eating birrias their entire lives. “Where we're from, if you go to a wedding or a quinceañera or any kind of party, that's pretty much what everybody gives,” she says from behind the counter of the Taqueria, between customers. 

The Rodriguez’s family business is part of an increasingly visible Hispanic community in Forest Park. There are 117 minority owned businesses in Forest Park, including the original Pho Dai Loi (which now has locations in Duluth and Buford Highway), Los Amigos (which specializes in Salvadoran pupusas), and the Lake City International Farmers Market. In 2019, voters in Forest Park elected the city’s first ever Hispanic council member, Hector Gutierrez, who helped start a city Day of the Dead celebration in 2021, and a Hispanic Heritage Festival in 2022.

The Rodriguez family opened the first location of the taqueria 18 years ago, in a Mexican shopping center about 11 miles up the road in College Park. “We ha[d] a lot of customers that used to [come] from Forest Park to the [location] in College Park. And they would always be like, why don't you guys open a place in Forest Park?” said Melissa.  

When an opportunity came up for her father to buy the building in Forest Park, he took it. Melissa had been working at the College Park location, which was much smaller, for years. With the new space, she felt like she had the ability to experiment and make her mark. “I came up with everything,” she said.

She makes her way around the back kitchen, proudly showing everything from the flour for the corn tortillas, which are made from scratch, to the consomé for the birria simmering in a large metal pot, to the whole chickens roasting on a large grill.  

“Vengan. Prueban la comida. Todo está rico. All authentic food. Everything is fresh. We make it as they order. Everything is made out of scratch.”

To learn more about Forest Park’s immigrant communities, check out articles from Canopy Atlanta’s Forest Park Issue:

State of Flux | Can Forest Park keep its Hispanic residents?

The Southside | A Vietnamese community flourishes in Clayton County

On a Sunday afternoon in late February, Babita Verma stood behind the cooktop in the kitchen of the Decatur Recreation Center, passing around a tray with nine different types of lentils. Each of them had distinct qualities and would cook very different types of daals, she explained to a dozen curious participants who had signed up for her South Indian cooking class.

“When people think Indian cuisine, they think chicken tikka masala and naan. But that’s not the kind of Indian food any Indian has grown up eating. Nobody used to make naan at home,” she said, laughing.

Babita is the founder of Bebe’s Kitchen, a social enterprise she started in 2020 that works with immigrant and refugee women chefs in Metro Atlanta to set up cooking classes and food pop ups. Her mission is to highlight home style meals from different cultures, while also providing “home chefs,” she says, an avenue for a possible career in the food industry. “Many [women] are exploring, and we want to help them without the challenges of overhead costs.”

The idea for Bebe’s Kitchen was born a few years after Babita moved to metro Atlanta from India. She is on an H4 visa- the visa granted to spouses of those who are on H1B employment visas - and she wasn’t able to secure a work permit initially. That, combined with raising two small children and adjusting to a new culture, was “very challenging,” she said.

She started volunteering at New American Pathways (NAP), a refugee and immigrant support organization, and Refugee Women’s Network, where she met women from around the world. “I could immediately connect and relate,” she said, while also recognizing that she was here by choice, and many of the families she met were not. (She now works at NAP as the Manager of Volunteerism and Community Outreach.)

Since the launch of Bebe’s Kitchen, Babita has organized 24 cooking classes and pop-ups in collaboration with 10 local chefs, including women from Ukraine, Lebanon, Ethiopia, and Venezuela. *I actually learned about Bebe’s Kitchen from my neighbor (hi Bailey!) who attended the Ukrainian cooking class, where they made dishes like borscht (a hearty vegetable soup) and piroshki (pastries filled with beef or veggies)*

This spring she’ll offer a Lebanese cooking class (back by popular demand!) on April 15th (tickets on sale here) and a Mother’s Day event on May 13th featuring classic Indian food (details to come, she said). Babita also hopes to work with a local Congolese chef to have a Congolese cooking workshop.

I connected with Babita to learn more her journey and her plans for Bebe’s Kitchen.

What inspired you to start Bebe's kitchen?

My story started with my BeBe - my mother. 'Bebe' is an Indian language meaning grandma or an elderly lady of the house. And these grandma’s/Yaya’s/ Baba’s are mostly about warm love and stories dished out with generous helpings of food. I grew up in North India and as a child, I would spend a lot of time in the kitchen watching my mom cook, asking questions - absorbing the sounds and smells around me. My job in the non profit sector in India took me around across different parts of India. 

During my travels, I met these amazing 'BeBe's' who opened their hearts and kitchens to me - I witnessed the power of food to make strangers feel more included.

In 2016, when I moved to the US for my husband’s job, I had to adapt to a new culture - it was challenging. I got the opportunity to meet these amazing refugee and immigrant women who were facing tremendous pressure to  adapt quickly to American culture, language, relevant professional skills and personal constraints often remain a challenge. But there was one skill in these women’s favor. Many were accomplished chefs in their cuisines, having learnt the finer aspects of heritage dishes from their BeBe's. And the idea of BeBe's Kitchen was born, and was eventually formally established in early 2020.

Tell us about some of the women you've worked with through the pop-ups and cooking classes.

It has been a fascinating journey where I personally have learned so much. While some of our partner chefs already have established small businesses, and were exploring to add new dimensions to their offerings, some were really just wetting their feet to see the response to the craft, test their food before formally launching in a farmers market, or increase their reach and gain new clientele for catering opportunities, or just test the waters before deciding what their path is going to be.

One trait is common across all of them - they are all so proud to be sharing their heritage with the larger community in Atlanta.

What do you think are the biggest challenges they have in starting their own businesses?

Lack of understanding and exposure of the overall food industry, mandatory certifications, legal and financial aspects and overhead costs/ financial investment. Being in a new country, it takes a lot of time and effort to form connections, get guidance, to gain confidence and sometimes to understand the value of their skills. 

Are there any recipes that you particularly love that you learned about through Bebe's kitchen?

There are so many! The very versatile Arepas that were a highlight of our Venezuelan class, the Lebanese Muhammara (roasted red pepper dip), the hearty Borscht from Ukraine, Pkhali (spinach balls) from the country Georgia, Afghani Mantu (dumplings), traditional Ethiopian Cookies and so many more! 

What are your dreams for your business? 

Our vision is to have ‘BeBe’s Marketplace’ - a space for BeBe’s chefs to sell their heritage dishes/ products, organize hands-on cooking experiences, dine in events, and much more; a space that offers welcoming and unique immersive experiences that go beyond food.

How can women home chefs get involved with Bebe’s Kitchen?

They can reach out to us on bebeskitchenatl@gmail.com, and I will be happy to discuss more with them. The focus is on heritage dishes and recipes. Also, we schedule a tasting and based on their  interest and comfort, we can feature them in our pop ups or cooking classes. 

We also encourage our chefs - specifically for pop ups to be ServSafe Certified.

You can follow Bebe’s Kitchen on Instagram, or contact Babita through the website here.

By Phoebe Quinton

285 South Contributor Phoebe Quinton grew up eating at Tassa. It was one of the few places she could go to that offered Caribbean food that tasted like her meals at home. For this feature, she spoke with Tassa's owner Radhika Edoo, to understand just how the restaurant came to be, and why it's so special for such a diverse range of people (including Samuel L. Jackson!).

With its wide front porch, white wood walls and sloping roof, Tassa’s Roti Shop looks more like a house than a restaurant. It doesn’t fight for attention in the bustling city of Atlanta, but instead sits quietly in Marietta just off I-75. The entrance is through the back door, creating a familiar and intimate atmosphere. The inside walls are lined with dozens of photographs of celebrity visitors ranging from Samuel L. Jackson to Viola Davis.

“West Indian people, you know, we’re eating breakfast and talking about lunch,” said Tassa’s owner Radhika Edoo.

Tassa didn’t start out as a spot for celebrities. Edoo’s love of food began when she was a child, watching her mother cook for their big family. “When you have ten children you don’t teach anybody. You cook, and they look,” she added, “And if they want to eat, they’ll learn to cook.”

As she got older she began to sell her cooking in Trinidad, taking orders at home and dropping them off for customers. She graduated to catering for weddings and festivals, but it wasn’t her full-time job. She worked for Petrotrin, a Trinidadian oil company, and later opened her own kindergarten school.

After moving to Atlanta in 1996, Edoo got her chance to open a restaurant. She visited for the first time to see the Olympics and moved with her family later that year. “America wasn’t a plan,” said Edoo. She moved because the warm weather and the celebratory air of the Olympics reminded her of Trinidad. Afterwards, she realized the Caribbean food in Atlanta restaurants didn’t capture the food she ate at home.

“It was not like I remembered. It was American-Caribbean; it wasn’t Caribbean-American. It had become more American,” Edoo said.

To ensure Tassa served Caribbean-American food, Edoo hired a small staff of Jamaicans and Trinidadians, most of which are family. The restaurant operates like a household, with everybody assuming a variety of responsibilities. Everybody cooks; everybody washes the dishes; everybody answers the phone.

Edoo built her customer base from the ground up by chatting with Caribbeans in Dekalb County, around Decatur. “I would work a full week. Then, Friday evening I would go to a party in Decatur to sell Tassa.”

Dekalb County had the largest number of English speaking Caribbeans in Atlanta in 2000, just before Edoo founded Tassa in 2006 in Cobb County, where the population was smaller.

As one of only a few Caribbean restaurants in the area at the time, Tassa piqued the curiosity of Carole Mitchell-Leon, a Trinidadian-American actress in Atlanta. According to Edoo, the two women quickly became friends, and Leon introduced the restaurant to her husband Kenny Leon, an American Broadway and TV director.

When Leon hosted parties for actors filming movies, he brought them to Tassa the next day. “On their way to the airport, this would be where they stop to eat,” said Edoo.

Word spread of the fresh roti and all you can eat buffet. Eventually, Edoo found Chilli from TLC, former Miss Universe Wendy Fitzwilliam, and former Mayor of Atlanta Kasim Reed wandering through her back door.

While the conversation brought people in, it was the food that kept them coming back. Customer favorites are the roti, which is made fresh everyday, and doubles, a Trinidadian staple. Edoo also recommends tasting the callaloo and coconut-boiled yucca, two lesser known dishes.

All of these options are displayed in a seasonal all you can eat buffet (staff make the plates for customers to avoid pandemic health concerns.) With the homey decor and family of staff, it’s easy to feel comfortable getting seconds.

“I wanted a place where people say, ‘This is like grandma’s,’” she said. “At grandma’s house you don’t have to stop eating, you can go back as many times as you want.”

Happy Friday 285 South friends!

Over the next few months I'll be periodically sharing stories I'm honored to be writing for the Atlanta History Center - stories that document key moments, people, and organizations in metro Atlanta's growing immigrant communities over the last forty years.

The first in the series is something that's close to home: the story behind Mughal's - a Pakistani restaurant on Jimmy Carter Blvd that I grew up going to with my family. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was the first of its kind, and provided something invaluable to the community: a taste of home and a place to gather. Since Mughal's opened over 30 years ago, the Pakistani community in the metro area has grown from 1,200 to over 13,000 in 2020, and that's naturally led to more, businesses, restaurants, and community organizations. Today, there's even something resembling a "Little Pakistan" less than two miles down the road from Mughal's.

I spoke with Mughal's founders, Azhar and Farah Mehmood, now the owners of Dil Bahar Cafe, about their journey to Atlanta, the moment they decided to open their own restaurant, and what came after that pivotal decision.

Below is an excerpt from the story, but be sure to check out the full story here on the Atlanta History Center website.

"When Azhar Mehmood moved to Metro Atlanta in 1989, he says there was no place he could get the dishes he and his wife cooked at home, such as Pakistani-style korma, biryani, and haleem. The community was growing and still, he says, 'There was no Pakistani restaurant here.'

One of the main gathering places for the community was Al-Farooq Masjid, a mosque founded by local Pakistani and Arab immigrants in 1980 in downtown Atlanta. The other was the annual Pakistan Independence Day celebration at the Gwinnett County’s Gas South Convention Center. Other than that, the then relatively small community gathered in rented event halls or in each other’s homes.

Mehmood came to the U.S. in 1989 by way of a Pakistan Day festival hosted by the Pakistan embassy in Washington, D.C. He was among the musicians the embassy brought to perform at the Washington Monument. One of his music teachers lived in Atlanta and Mehmood decided to move to Norcross to stay close to him.

During his first years here, he worked a mix of odd jobs while also still performing at local community fundraisers as well as live concerts around the U.S. But the income wasn’t stable, so Mehmood and his wife, Farah, decided to open a business, one that accommodated his two small children at the time.

Farah had just quit her job and had her third child. Encouraged by their friends’ love of their home-cooking and her own passion for food, she floated the idea of a restaurant to Azhar.

“I told my husband, let’s go and start a restaurant. He looked at me and said ‘are you crazy? And I said, we can do it you know. And, we did it.”

Read the full story here.

TOP PHOTO: Glass cases displayed at Dil Bahar Cafe that contain archival photos and newspaper articles of Azhar's musical careers and the couples' restaurants and businesses around Atlanta.

I'm not going to lie. Finding restaurant "iftar specials" around Atlanta is harder than you think.

That's why I unexpectedly ended up at Ameer's Mediterranean Grill on Briarcliff Road for iftar on Thursday, instead of Dijla Cafe in Decatur, as I had planned. I had come across a "Ramadan Special" ad on the Dijla Cafe website earlier this week - a bright yellow graphic with pictures of kabobs that said $10.99 iftar buffet. I was intrigued by the "Iraqi kabobs" on the menu. A few hours before iftar I called to double check about the buffet special, and the guy who answered the phone had no idea what I was talking about. The information was outdated.

Through more phone calls and googling I came across Ameer's Mediterranean Grill - a small restaurant off Briarcliff Road in Atlanta. A man with a deep, gruff voice answered. To my surprise, Ameer's offered an iftar buffet. The man on the phone was the owner and head chef (or as he later corrected me, "master chef"), Sami Salame, originally from Jerusalem. I started asking him a bunch of questions ("When did the restaurant open? What sort of cuisine specifically?"). He told me I was tying up the phone line and to call him back on another line. The subsequent conversation was short - I would just come in and try the food that evening.

The buffet was a startling $24.99. With tips these days, it was almost $30. That's $5 more than the famous Mughal iftar buffet, and $14 more than the obsolete Dijla Cafe one. (Still less than the Chai Pani iftar box though!).

A sign was taped onto the side of the menu on display inside the restaurant, next to a giant painting of the old city of Jerusalem hanging on the wall: "Due to Rising Market Prices, ALL food items will be marked up by $2.00 starting Nov 29th, 2021."

At least they were up front about it. Ameer himself, the son of Sami, talked me through some of the items in the buffet - beet salad, fattoush salad, baba ghanoush, fried fish, chicken kabobs. The list was long. To my delight, there was a whole table set out just for salads.

But the shining stars of the buffet were the dishes Ameer's doesn't normally offer. It was the Ramadan specials that were well, most special. I tried mansaf for the first time, rice cooked with lamb and yogurt with a sprinkling of slivered almonds, a traditional Palestinian and Jordanian dish. And then there was the chicken musakhan, another classic Palestinian dish (pictured in the top photo) - chicken baked with generous quantities of onions and potatoes, and seasoned with sumac. There was also molohkhiya - a stew made of molokhiya leaves, a leafy green that also goes by the name Egyptian spinach or Jew's Mallow. All new to me.

When I asked Sami why these dishes weren't on the regular menu, he said that during Ramadan, people didn't want dry food like chicken shwarma. "When you've been fasting all day you want the taste of home cooked food at the end of the day."

By 8:30, all the tables in the small cafe were full. The customers were diverse- Black Muslim, Arab, South Asian, African - and over half of them were young men (possibly students from Emory University which is less than two miles away from the restaurant). Yes, the buffet is pricey. But for students who may be far from the comfort foods they're used to during Ramadan - slow cooked stews, rices, and soups - I could see how it could be worth the price.

As promised, I searched around town this week to see if I could find any restaurants that had specials for iftar - the sunset meal during Ramadan when Muslims break their fast.

There was of course Mughals, a Pakistani institution on Jimmy Carter Blvd that's been known for years throughout the South Asian community for its legendary iftar buffets. And I saw that Chai Pani Decatur had a "Break your fast at home with Chai Pani" box that includes some menu favorites like kale pakoras. Except it was $30 a box, and the box serves one person. Probably delicious, but expensive to the point of exclusionary.

So I called up a bunch of restaurants to see what else was out there including an Indonesian restaurant, two Bangladeshi restaurants, and several Middle Eastern restaurants. I got either a voicemail or no news of any specials - just a curt response - “regular menu only."

When I called Bismillah Cafe (which translates to "In the name of Allah" Cafe) on Buford Highway, I was on the verge of giving up. We grew up just eating dates and pakoras at home or a friend’s place for iftar, or breaking fast at the mosque. Was "iftar box" actually a Western concept that my Instagram saturated brain had somehow absorbed? I started having doubts about the whole thing.

A man answered the phone and said they had an iftar box. He passed the phone to someone else who told me their $10 box had three types of pakoras, channa, biryani, shammi kabob, jalebi, and dates.

We (my husband and our two kids) met my parents there for iftar the next day. As we drove up, my 7 year old son Azi pointed to a giant yellow sign that said "Tortas Locas." "Is that where we're going?" he said excitedly.

"Nope," my husband said, "but it's right next to it.”

We parked directly in front of the cafe’s outdoor seating - red and black booths lined along the outside of the small building which houses both the cafe and a halal meat and grocery store. There were flyers for immigration lawyers, a global money transfer service, and one in Hindi with a picture of a South Asian military general hanging on the building besides the tables. It’s mostly a takeout joint, but we decided to take a seat. It was warm outside and our kids were getting a thrill out of watching planes fly so close overhead to land at nearby Dekalb-Peachtree Airport.

Outdoor seating at Bismillah Cafe on Buford Highway.

Within minutes of arriving, we were chatting with Bismillah’s owner and head chef, Nowshed Hossain.

Nowshed moved to Georgia from Bangladesh in 2005, and two years later, opened Bismillah Cafe. The cafe offers a variety of items (from shawarma to hot wings to french fries), catering to a very mixed customer base - “20 percent Bangladeshi, rest is mixed - African, Mexican, Asian,” he said. But Bismillah’s specialty is Bangladeshi food, which Nowshed learned to cook from his mother. I asked him what made it different from Indian and Pakistani cuisine. “Same spices, different cooking style,” he told me. “We use regular spices from back home. Loose spices, not the pack." By “pack” he likely meant Shan Masala - a popular brand of premixed boxed spices - and a welcome shortcut for many South Asian cooks.

Nowshed Hossain, owner and head chef of Bismillah Cafe on Buford Highway.

We ordered one iftar box, a mixed biryani, and the rohu fish curry. When my dad asked for some plates, a man in the kitchen came out with a takeout box he had broken in half and handed them to us.

The goat biryani in the iftar box was moist and flavored with green and black cardamom, and to my surprise, wasn’t spicy. The rohu fish curry had a rich gingery taste and rivaled a shrimp curry I’d eaten the week before at a much more expensive Indian restaurant. And the chutney was different from the chutneys I’m used to - it was sweet and creamy. I agreed with many of the Google reviewers - the food had the feeling of a roadside dhaba or an NYC food truck. But I think, was better.

There we are - digging into the $10 iftar box which included pakoras, biryani, channa, a samosa, and some jalebis.

If you’ve been fasting all day, the iftar box will definitely fill you up in minutes. But if you’re vegetarian or have more plant based preferences, you’d be hard pressed to find a vegetable. The closest we got to a vegetable was the channa (chickpeas) and whatever was making the chutney green (probably cilantro.)

A cook at Bismillah Cafe prepares the chicken shwarma, which is mixed into the mixed biryani we ordered.

And that's the mixed biryani - with lamb and chicken shwarma - served with a side of sweet green chutney.

With such generous portions, I was baffled by how low the prices were. I asked Nowshed how the rise in food prices had been impacting his business. “I just raised up prices one dollar. Rice used to be 10 dollars, $10.99, $11.99. Now it's 20 dollars. Everything is very high.” Still, he's kept the prices dramatically lower than the competition. "We are making less profit, but we can survive. It's better if you make less profit, but sell more."

Nowshed told me that mostly bachelors come to Bismillah Cafe, because there’s limited seating for families. This is partly what has motivated him to expand - he plans to open a restaurant in Doraville, and another one right next door to the current location in a few months.

There we are hanging out in the outdoor seating area of Bismillah Cafe.

After over an hour hanging out at our booth, we gathered our empty takeout containers and threw them in the trash. Nowshed stood at the front, looking out into the parking lot, facing Buford Highway.

"Do you like Atlanta?"I asked.

"I love Atlanta," he said. "It's like Bangladesh."

He must have noticed my befuddled expression and added, "the weather is just like Bangladesh. Not too much rainy or cloudy. Warm."

Last week I had the pleasure of going to Plaza Fiesta where I picked up lunch from Arepa Grill. I wouldn't have known about these arepas if it weren't for Natalia Garzon from We Love Buford Highway, who told me about the owners, originally from Venezuela, and their delicious food.

I moved to metro Atlanta in 1989, and the only Latin food I remember eating were tacos. That might be because I was 7 years old and couldn't drive and explore cuisines around the city on my own, or because there weren't a lot of options back then.

I do remember the 1996 Olympics though. My brothers and I were volunteers at the Paralympics and had the glory of walking around the Centennial Stadium in oversized blue t-shirts, passing out water bottles to world class athletes. The Olympics were a turning point for Atlanta - the construction boom in the years preceding the games was a major reason large communities of Hispanics began moving here for jobs.

During those Olympic years (1990-2000), metro Atlanta's foreign born population grew by an incredible 233 percent. That growth naturally sparked a whole new layer of services, businesses and of course, restaurants for these new communities.

Plaza Fiesta, embodies that growth. "It's the first hub where LatinX communities can come and do what they did in Latin America - go to the plaza," said Natalia.

It's packed with over 280 different businesses - bakeries, threading salons, insurance services, toy shops, clothing stalls, paleterias, and a food court with everything from tortas to enchiladas to arepas.

Claudia and Pedro Cardenas' cafe- Arepa Grill - is a sign of just how much food options have diversified. They opened Arepa Grill, a small food stall in Plaza Fiesta, in 2019. It's sandwiched (no pun intended!) between Carnitas Michoacan and la Espiga Dorada, a Mexican bakery. This year they expanded and opened another location - a full fast casual restaurant in Doraville.

The menu is full of Venezuelan staples like arepas, tequenos (fried cheese sticks, and cachapas (corn pancakes). It caters not just to Georgia's growing Venezuelan community (in 2015, there were 8,000 Venezuelans in the state, and as of 2019, there are about 23,000), but also to the diverse immigrant communities around Buford Highway.

"We decided to stay on Buford Highway because it is multicultural. You find every culture here: Japanese, Korean, Latin American. They are open minded people that want to discover our food," they told We Love Buford Highway, for the Sabores de Buford Highway campaign.

I like to think I fit in those categories - "open minded" and from another culture!

Which brings me to me, trying the food. An arepa is basically a pancake made of corn flour (gluten free!) - it's crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. It can be filled with cheese, chicken, beef, beans, or eggs. Kind of like a sandwich. I ordered the "Black Vegan" which was stuffed with black beans, avocado, and plantains. It also came with three different sauces - red, white and green.

The arepa was flavorful and satisfying - all the different starches were balanced out by the creamy avocado, green sauce( tangy cilantro and mint tasting) and the white sauce (tasted like sour cream with a hint of horseradish).

My husband had the "Pelua," which is an arepa filled with shredded beef and shredded gouda. He said it was "meaty and delicious." When I said I needed a better description he said, "it's corny." I then asked him if I could try a bite and he gave me a shred of beef 1 centimeter long. That tiny piece was pretty tasty.

Each arepa was $6.99. It's reassuring that they don't seem to be pricing out folks, even as their popularity and customer base is growing.

It's hard to keep pace with Buford Highway - it changes as fast as the city expands. But every time I drive along those six lanes, I'm reminded that I live in a world much bigger than Atlanta itself.

Enjoy your weekend, and maybe an arepa too.

It’s 5:45 on a Thursday evening and the atmosphere in the air at Kabab King, a Pakistani restaurant off Jimmy Carter Blvd, is electric.

Customers are drifting towards the front counter, forming a wide circle. Qamar Hayat, Kabab King’s owner, wearing his signature green cap, takes his place next to three giant metal pots. A hush descends. A young woman dressed in a shalwar kameez stands across from him, her phone pointed directly at him.

The Kabab King evening Facebook Live broadcast begins, “As salaamalaikum mere dosto aap logo ke muhubatthay alhamdillailah jis tereekay hum everyday live aathay hai,” (Salaam my friends and with your love, thanks to God we are live again as we are every evening here at Kabab King)” says Qamar, his voice booming across the restaurant.

He describes the evening’s specials - beef pilau, chicken pilau, and beef haleem. At various points in his four minute broadcast, he breaks out into spontaneous poetry praising God, the food, and encouraging people to take a break from their cooking and come into Kabab King.

Two men behind the counter, wearing Kabab King shirts, are waiting for their cue. As soon as Qamar says Bismillah! - one of them lifts the lid of the first pot. Steam billows out, clouding Qamar’s face. The camera zooms in, revealing the beef pilau - tender beef slow cooked with rice and a myriad of South Asian spices.

This ritual wasn’t always part of the food scene for Pakistanis in Atlanta. In the early 1990s, there was just one Pakistani restaurant in the entire metro Atlanta region - Mughals. Also located off of Jimmy Carter Blvd, it started out as a bare bones cafe catering directly to Pakistanis looking for the taste of home they couldn’t find at the Indian restaurants around town- a place that served classic Pakistani dishes like nihari, paya, and haleem.

But now, there are a lot more options. As the community in metro Atlanta grew, so did the number of restaurants. There are almost 12,000 Pakistanis in the area, up from about 9,000 a decade ago. Almost half of these families live in Gwinnett County. Jimmy Carter Blvd, a major thoroughfare of immigrant businesses in Gwinnett County, is home to at least seven other Pakistani restaurants. Three of them are located in the same strip mall as Kabab King.

What distinguishes Kabab King from the others - and contributes to its steady stream of mostly Pakistani customers - are the deghs - metal pots often used in South Asia to cook large quantities of stews and rice dishes like biryani, pilau, and haleem.

When Qamar moved to Atlanta in 2014, he says he noticed that food in restaurants was often reheated. His motto - food should be fresh. That’s why he says, everyone loves “ghar ka khanna,” home cooked food. At the time, he says no other restaurants were cooking with deghs - “it’s such a big quantity, maybe they thought they wouldn’t be able to sell all of it.”

Qamar was determined, so he tried anyway. Three years after arriving in Atlanta, he opened Kabab King. He started doing Facebook lives highlighting daily degh specials - and Kabab King’s followers on Facebook (now at 110K) and customers, have been growing ever since.

On any given week, Qamar says anywhere from 700 to 1000 people come into the restaurant. The customer base is mostly Pakistani and Indian, but also some Americans - “food lovers” - he says. And contrary to national trends, when COVID hit, he says his business really took off. The restaurant switched to takeout only and there were times, he says, that there were 60 to 70 cars lined up outside. “People really wanted fresh food.”

Qamar’s days are busy, but still, he’s happy in Atlanta. "Life here is easy, peaceful and not too fast.”

He also gets to do what he loves, “Basically, I love my business.”

It’s not just feeding people that he loves, it’s creating a sense of home for Pakistanis in Atlanta, “I’m not the only one missing - everyone is missing home,” he says. And so with each deg, each Facebook live, each photo on the wall of his restaurant, Qamar finds joy in creating a little semblance of home for himself and his community.

If you search Zabiha.com, a halal restaurant locator, for halal burgers in Atlanta you’ll find at least a dozen different restaurants.

If you search for halal tacos, just one place pops up - Salsa Taqueria and Wings.

Salsa Taqueria is located inside a Shell gas station off Buford Highway in Brookhaven. Mehvish Chaudhary, originally from Pakistan, and her husband, from Bangladesh, are the owners of the gas station.

In 2020 they decided to convert a section of the Shell convenience store into their very own restaurant, something they had always wanted to do. Their goal was to provide a new halal food offering - something outside the standard halal South Asian fare you get in so many Atlanta restaurants.

“There was a need, this was not available, it’s something different. We wanted options for everyone,” said Mehvish.

I met my dad there for lunch. Salsa Taqueria is across from an apartment complex and sandwiched between “Ruby’s Coin Laundry” and “Latina Supermarket.” It was clean, the staff was masked, and most of the patrons were too. There’s a decent looking outdoor space with red tables and chairs and strings of light hanging above.

We ordered what Mehvish told us was their most popular item - the Birria beef tacos ($3.99 each). We also ordered the Birria chicken tacos ($3.49, and second most popular), a regular shrimp taco ($2.99), and a regular vegetarian taco ($2.99).

I’d never heard of birria tacos before. When I asked Mehvish about them, she told me they were popular...and not much else. To my South Asian eye and ear, “birria” sounded easily like a Punjabi dish my relatives would force me to try against my will (my tendencies, which are the butt of many jokes at family gatherings, are more salady and vegetarian). The birria taco is very fried looking (“looks like a puri” my dad said) and is stuffed with lots of meat, and lots of cheese.

Birria tacos, according to the Internet, hail from the western part of Mexico from a state of Jalisco. One of the cooks (who was Mexican) at Salsa Taqueria said they were from Guerrero and Mehvish said they were from “all around Mexico.”

Anyways. The point is, a birria taco consists of stewed meat (traditionally goat or lamb), a tortilla that’s been dipped in that same stew, and a generous helping of cheese all grilled together to create a puri panini taco thing. There’s a little container of “consomé,” or the broth of the stew (me and my dad thought it was shorba, I swear I tasted garam masala in it!) for dipping.

I have to admit, it was tasty. The shell was crunchy and crisp. The cheese and the meat melted together giving it this rich, comforting, almost buttery taste. The consomé - the perfect accompaniment. (That consomé really tripped us up btw...my dad asked a fellow South Asian patron if it was chole). The cilantro and onions on top added some color and freshness

.

The shrimp taco was a hit with my dad. I was hoping he would really relish every bite and give me some New York Times food critic level feedback. But the most I could get out of him was “very good, very good” between the three bites before the taco was finished.

The vegetarian taco I ordered (I know, what am I doing ordering vegetarian food at a halal restaurant) was fine. I was expecting beans in it. Instead I found some carrots. I dipped it in the red sauce it came with hoping to give it some needed flavor. A fire seared my throat. I exploded into a coughing fit, my eyes watering. My dad and I ran inside looking for water. I looked over at Mehvish and asked, “what WAS that sauce?” She shrugged, “Salsa.”

Before leaving, I made one last attempt to get some more words out of Mehvish. I asked her what she wanted people to know about her restaurant. “It’s full halal menu, authentic, and everything is made in the restaurant.” When I pressed her on what she meant by authentic, she said it meant it was from Mexico. When I asked her where in Mexico, she again told me, “all around Mexico.”

I can’t say I learned a lot about Mehvish and her husband’s story or how they’ve been faring since the pandemic, but I did see the beauty of Buford Highway in action. They've taken a traditional taco and opened it up to a whole new part of the population just by making it halal. For the hour I was there, I watched a steady stream of mostly South Asian and African American customers order tacos.

I left fuller than I usually am after lunch, somewhat surprised by the tastiness of the food, and happy to have spent an hour with my dad in the middle of the week.

My five year old son has sandy brown hair and peachy skin and you would never know he had South Asian roots unless...you saw him eat a mango.

First, there is silence. The usual little boy chatter and bickering of our home ceases. He closes his eyes. Bites into a piece. I place a paper towel roll next to him, in a futile attempt to contain the flood of mango juices that ensues. Marigold colored streams run down his fingers, his mouth. He is channeling and experiencing something on a higher plane - perhaps invoking the spirit of his great, great grandfather in Punjab, where mangos grew bountifully and in the hierarchy of life, were second only to immediate family.

Mangoes bring joy to our home - except when it comes to the big middle piece, the pit of the mango with all the flesh around it. I manage to cut most things in equal halves (gummies, hard candies, popsicles) to keep the kids from killing each other. But this is impossible with this coveted piece. Who gets to eat it is a question of timing, destiny, and parental skill. I once settled an epic battle by gripping the slippery pit with both my hands, wrist muscles flexing, letting them each take one greedy, desperate bite at a time.

This passion isn’t unusual. There’s a direct link between the happiness of South Asians and mangoes, even though I don’t have an NIH study to prove that (just yet…I plan to email them about this).

At a time when the pandemic feels endless, the weather is weird, and headlines from Afghanistan are making our stomachs do somersaults, it’s natural for us to turn to mangoes for hope.

My kids have never tried the mangoes from India or Pakistan. They eat U.S. supermarket mangoes, which are 90 percent of the time, from Mexico, Peru, or Brazil. Indian mangoes make up less than a quarter of one percent of the U.S.’s mango supply. Pakistani mangoes are even harder to find. Which makes them that much more special.

To lift us out of the general pandemic doldrums, I wanted to blow the kids’ minds with a subcontinental mango.

So I called the local Indian grocery store to check if they had the famed Indian Alphonso mango, aka the “king of mangoes” (though most Pakistanis would argue the title belongs to their native Chaunsa mango). A man answered.

“Do you have Indian mangoes?” I asked.

The response was angry. “No, ma’am. Corona!” Corona? I dialed the number for Cherians grocery store in Decatur. The woman who answered let me down more gently, saying they would have mangoes “next year ma’am.”

A trip to both grocery stores confirmed what I had hoped was untrue - they only had green unripe taut-skinned Mexican mangoes. Some of these even had ominous black spots on them.

These were the mangoes staring back at me at the local Indian grocery store.

I came home with a box of Dabur Real Alphonso Mango Fruit Juice nectar (22% Alphonso Mango Pulp), Parle-G biscuits, and a ripe papaya (good for digestion).

And placing the blame on Corona was accurate. Mango season is over and imports from India have been suspended since the start of the pandemic. That’s because USDA inspectors haven’t been able to travel to India to do the required pre-clearance work for importing mangoes - something called irradiation. Basically, a USDA inspector has to go to mango facilities in India to make sure they’re exposed to gamma radiation to kill off any bugs or pests, before the mangoes can be sent to the U.S.

I moved on. Mango season might be over, but I could be prepared for next year. I messaged my cousin who procures Pakistani Chaunsa mangoes through a Whatsapp dealer. He shared his contact with me - a person saved in his phone as Pakistani Mangoes. I sent Pakistani Mangoes a message, asking him about the availability of Chaunsas in the U.S. Pakistani Mangoes responded, saying the season was over and that importing the mangoes was a “very long and risky process.” But, he could add me to the list for next year. I was then added to a Whatsapp group called “Phalwaala Atlanta Mangoe.”

I was alarmed when Pakistani Mangoes switched from WhatsApp to text and sent me this message (he just needed info to put me on the relevant list though!).

So yes, even though the weather would make you think otherwise, mango season is over. I’m holding out hope for next year. My dream for 2022 - the worst of the pandemic will be over, COVID restrictions lifted, my kids, nephews, nieces and parents will be sitting together at our kitchen table, blindfolded with an Indian, Pakistani and ordinary supermarket mango in front of them. And we’ll have the ultimate mango taste test.

Until then, sipping on Alphonso Mango Fruit Juice and eating two dollar mango kulfis outside of Gokul Sweets will have to suffice.

After my failed attempt to get an Indian or Pakistani mango, I treated my five year old son to a mango kulfi outside Gokul Sweets in Decatur. Even though he's never tasted one he said, "they taste like Pakistani mangoes."