By Susan Puckett

Photos By Greg Dupree

Nygren entered the kitchen almost as soon as she was born. Her mother, Margaret Lupo, became pregnant with her in 1959, three years after Lupo opened her first restaurant, Margaret’s Tray Shop, in downtown Atlanta. “She took me to work with her in a tomato basket and passed me around the other cooks while she worked,” says Nygren. In 1962 Lupo became the proprietress of Mary Mac’s Tea Room, and over the next couple of decades she turned the meat-and-three restaurant into an Atlanta icon, sealing her reputation as the queen of Dixie cuisine in the process. All the while, Nygren worked as a dish dryer, then cashier, then hostess.