Fearless Innovation Atlanta's Food Story

Written by Chef Taria Camerino, Fearless Innovation: Atlanta's Food Story is a cookbook packed with tips and techniques that exemplify the diversity in the Atlanta food scene. The book showcases over 30 distinct chefs with 50 fresh, foolproof and flavorful food and drink recipes designed for professionals, home chefs and foodies alike.

Fearless Innovation is a 285-page book featuring 50 food and drink recipes created by some of Atlanta's most unpretentious and courageous chefs. Notable mentions include the 2020 James Beard Awards Semifinalists Maricela Vega, Aaron Phillips, Ron Hsu, Claudia Martinez, Steven Satterfield and Jiyeon Lee. Breathtaking imagery by local photographer Brittany Wages captures bold textures and bright colors making their dishes come to life.

More than a cookbook, Fearless Innovation tells the story of Atlanta's history to fight in pursuit of a thriving restaurant economy. The forward is written by historian and author, Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, Ph.D., which teaches readers how Atlanta's restaurants played a vital role in destroying Jim Crow laws. It tells the story of Atlanta's history and how its people, food and restaurant scene impacted the American civil rights movement to helped dismantle and overcome Jim Crow on the premise that all people, regardless of race, should be encouraged to simply share a seat at the table.

Taria Camerino is a traditionally French-trained chef. By nature, she fractures into a student and teacher at every intersection of her talents. By desire, she distributes herself to the community, city, region, and world. In this distribution, she contributes pieces of her, in the form of entrepreneur, visionary, maestro of all things cibarious and beautiful.

Atlanta was made more alive by her Sugarcoated Radical movement. Full of fun just in the name – a small storefront in the historic Old Fourth Ward. Summertime at The Optimist transported us all back to our childhood memories of chasing down ice cream trucks, when Taria's dessert menu offered individually wrapped frozen treats. Many enjoyed Taria's talents years ago during a chocolate and bourbon tasting, held in a small neighborhood coffee shop.

In the past, parts of Taria refracted overseas, with her ending up in Japan learning the tradition of wagashi, delicate pastries to serve with tea.

After working a position as the head pastry chef at the Tate Modern in London, Taria made her way back stateside. Taria teamed up with SAIAH Arts International, an award-winning organization dedicated to creating sensory immersive experiences, and every single time her menu was the underpinning to groundbreaking performances.

Their first major collaboration came as Terminus, an immersive experience into the South during the Civil War, inspired by Richard Adams' pastoral novel, "Watership Down."

In her next collaboration, the audience was invited into the secret world of Milk, a traveling restaurant group similarly dedicated to performances based on the interdependent nature of artists, chefs, and audience.

Now, Taria is refracting into print. Much like Taria, this book will be difficult to quantify in that it will be unlike any publication currently on the market.