Frances Virginia Wikle Whitaker founded her Tea Room in the late 1920s. It was indelibly stamped with taste and style. Ladies wore white gloves. Men behaved like gentlemen. The setting was elegant, decorus; the food was sumptuous, nutritionally balanced, and artfully presented. The menu introduced an airy Sherry Chiffon Pie, fresh Deviled Crab, and Chicken Salad crowned with shimmery-red Tomato Aspic.

For almost four decades, the "Frances Virginia" reigned on Peachtree Street, as prestigious as her neighbors - Loew's Grand premiering Gone With the Wind, Andy Griffith's drawling at the Henry Grady Hotel, Elvis' Rocking the Paramount. That Atlanta is gone. But the "Frances Virginia" is lovingly secure in these recipes and memories of those who cherished the graciousness of the old city. If you want to know what the South was like in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, read this book. You can smell and taste and slmost see how life once was at the legendary Frances Virginia Tea Room restaurant, the Queen on inland Southern cuisine.