La Grotta is where I fell in love with restaurants. It happened over time, and mainly when its doors were closed. As a girl, my parents became friends with owner and chef Antonio Abizanda, who lived in one of the condos above the restaurant tucked away on Peachtree. Abizanda was as close as I came to having an uncle in Atlanta, and I like to think he claims my sister and me as family, too.

When Abizanda wasn’t working at La Grotta, he would take us to over-the-top Sunday brunches at the Ritz Carlton Buckhead, where towers of seafood and dishes of caviar with all the trimmings became part of my culinary education. On Sunday evenings, he and my father cooked together while drinking red wine and joking in Spanish.