Duck and Waffles

Learning to cook came naturally for Deborah VanTrece. The owner of Twisted Soul Cookhouse & Pours in Atlanta with her wife, Lorraine, and daughter, Kursten, she spent childhood afternoons watching her grandmother at the stove. There was the aunt who made perfect neck bones, and another who had macaroni and cheese down to a science. Her dad was often at the grill, and her mother would head right to the kitchen after work. “I liked to eat, they cooked well, and I paid attention,” she says.

VanTrece left home to become a flight attendant, eventually moving to