The AJC saved my mother’s restaurant — and brought me home

I peer out the window at the darkening sky and realize I’m facing Lenox Square Mall, glowing as it always has. A reliable landmark in a city that has changed its shape and feel since I last knew it. I worked in that mall in 1996, fresh off a Greyhound bus with a backpack, a change of clothes and a deep desire to make something of myself.

I watch headlights thread through the parking lot below, and something rises in my throat.

I realize it’s taken me nearly 30 years to cross the street.

Food has always been how I mark moments in time. Indulgent feasts to celebrate wins. First date meals filled with butterflies. Comforting spreads for those darker stretches when life quietly rearranges itself.

Credit: Courtesy of Rafael N. Ruiz Mederos

Credit: Courtesy of Rafael N. Ruiz Mederos

But my Atlanta food story doesn’t start with a meal. It starts in a hospital.

In 1999, a dump truck hit my car in Alpharetta on my way to broadcasting school. I woke up from a coma two weeks later in the ICU at Northside Hospital with 19 broken ribs, a punctured lung and cracked bones in my neck. My Toyota Tercel looked like a street taco folded in half by a drunk with fat fingers. The paramedics had to cut me out with the Jaws of Life.

I couldn’t return to waiting tables at Stoney River Steakhouse and Grill in Roswell. A server hobbling across a dining room is never a good look. So my manager moved me into the kitchen as garde manger, the kitchen station responsible for cold dishes.

I sat on a wooden stool making salads and desserts, popping Aleve like M&M’s, learning the rhythm of the line: pans clanging, cooks leaning into one another, the quiet urgency and odd intimacy of feeding people you’ll never meet.

That back-of-house dance changed me. It gave me a deep appreciation for the obsessive labor behind even the simplest dishes.

A year later, my mother opened a Caribbean restaurant in an old Pizza Hut on Roswell Road. A brown woman with a thick Colombian accent, running a business with her Iranian husband in the Atlanta suburbs. Not an easy sell, but people were curious and we found our regulars.

Then Sept. 11, 2001, happened. It was early fall, and while the trees that lined Roswell Road slowly turned bright yellow and red, a whole country mourned. The economy collapsed. Our dining room emptied. The hope in my mother’s eyes gave way to fear. She had bet her life savings on a dream that was slipping away.

A few months later, while she spent her days anxiously poring over spreadsheets in a cramped back office, the AJC published a glowing review. The next morning, the line wrapped around the building. We ran out of everything. My mother was so overwhelmed, she locked the doors mid-service.

Credit: AJC staff

Credit: AJC staff

That was the first time I understood what food writing could do. Capturing the emotions that cuisine can evoke and translating that experience into words can fill a dining room. Shape a neighborhood. Change a life.

Coming back to Atlanta now, to work at the paper that once saved my mother’s restaurant, feels like the most full circle moment of my 50 years. And strangely, I don’t feel triumphant.

I feel accountable.

This city has changed. So have I. It’s time for us to get to know each other again.

In these first days, the meals I’ve had have quietly stitched themselves into my memory.

There’s the dinner I had with Olivia Wakim and Henri Hollis, members of my food team at the AJC. As I walked up to Lo Kee in west Midtown, I felt nervous in a way I haven’t felt in years. Not the adrenaline I get when I’m standing in front of a camera or in a busy kitchen. This was quieter. The kind that shows up when you care, because you’re planning to build something meaningful together.

I was surprised by how easily the conversation flowed between the three of us. Shy smiles turned to belly laughs as each of us realized this was the start of something good, really good. We ended the night with the Winter Citrus dessert by pastry chef Maximilian Lucas. It was whimsically presented as a small tangerine with a delicate leaf balanced on top and a quenelle of blood orange sorbet positioned staunchly on the side. The whisper-thin white chocolate shell of the orange cracked to reveal a silky mandarin mousse and a heart of tangy fresh Satsuma and Cara Cara citrus. It was creamy and subtly sweet, with pops of texture from a bed of caramelized sticky rice crumble.

I closed my eyes and groaned. A perfect bite.

You can read Hollis’ formal restaurant review next week.

My third meal came at The Deer and The Dove in Decatur, with my predecessor, Ligaya Figueras. I was winding down what would turn into an 18-hour day. I was frazzled but humbled she’d made the time. She’s the kind of woman whose presence makes you sit straighter and lean in.

We ordered a chicken liver paté that had probably been strained through a tamis a half dozen times to create its incredibly light texture. It had been piped through a pastry bag like a satin ribbon onto a thick slice of brioche, beautifully toasted in a nutty butter and charred at the edges. It was earthy and floral, with surprising notes of cinnamon from the dollop of apple butter alongside.

We talked about what this section is. What it could be. What the paper owes its readers. What we owe to the places we review.

At one point, sensing that I had caught the full weight of my responsibility like a 50-pound medicine ball, she smiled kindly and said, “You can’t be John Kessler, and you can’t be me. You’re going to have to be yourself.”

It shouldn’t have hit me as hard as it did. Maybe because it was late and I was tired. Or maybe because it’s one thing to tell yourself you’re ready for a role and another thing to hear someone else give you permission to occupy it without imitation.

I crossed a street today that I’ve been standing in front of for decades.

Credit: Monti Carlo / AJC

Credit: Monti Carlo / AJC

Now in a new apartment, I’m dealing with mounds of crumbled packing paper, a never-ending parade of bubble wrap and that weird, dead air of a home that doesn’t have any memories attached to it. The week is still a tornado of meetings and new faces and names. But now these meals are pinned to it like notes on a bulletin board: ramen in a hotel room with Lenox Square glowing in the distance and a lump in my throat; a dining room full of laughter and an unforgettable dessert; a Decatur table where someone who held this job before me told me the only thing I actually needed to hear.

The work now is to walk this city carefully and catalogue it honestly. To sit long enough to notice what changes and what stubbornly stays the same. And to write about it all in a way that reveals why the culture taking shape around kitchens and counters can’t be ignored.

But I can’t do that alone.

I need you to tell me what is most meaningful to you. Where you go when you need comfort, and where you make a reservation when you need clout. Which mom-and-pop you worry about when rents go up. The dish you’d miss if it disappeared tomorrow. What our section gets wrong and what it gets right.

I’m not here to be the expert who deems what’s worthy and what isn’t. I’m here to listen. To be a mirror that reflects the food stories that give this city its pulse.

That’s the job.

My name is Monti. Hello, Atlanta. It’s good to see you again.