and the Yukon Gold potatoes are scooped with a melon baller to
echo the other shapes. When the soup is finished, it’s as stunning
to behold as it is to eat.
“This is really good,” I say as I begin devouring it.
“It is really good,” Quatrano agrees.
Quatrano started cooking at an early age in Fairfield,
Connecticut, because her mother didn’t cook at all. “I cooked
because I got hungry,” she tells me. “And when I got older, I left
as soon as I could. I wanted my autonomy.”
Her quest for autonomy took her to San Francisco, where she
begged for a job at the legendary Zuni Café. She went to cooking
school in the mornings and worked at Zuni at night. It was in
cooking school that she met her husband and future business
partner, Clifford Harrison. They eventually moved to Atlanta to
live in a double-wide trailer on a sixty-acre piece of property that
her mother owned.
Together, Quatrano and her husband built a house, built a barn,
built a fence, and turned the sixty acres into a working farm. In
1992 they opened their first restaurant, Bacchanalia, using the
food from the farm to stock their kitchen.
“That’s amazing,” I say, in awe.
“I’m not sure it’s that admirable,” Quatrano counters. “There
are wonderful farmers here in Atlanta.”
The point, though, is that in her quest for autonomy, Quatrano
rose to a stature unknown to most working chefs in America. She