AMA Art Ball 2018: History in the Making
​Meet Our Chefs
Saturday, February 10, 2018, 6:30 PM

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We are so grateful to the amazing chefs who are giving their time and expertise making the 2018 Art Ball one of the hottest tickets in town! Having made the museum's highly acclaimed Supper Series a tremendous success, these Georgia chefs are back with a fabulous five-course menu.  
Chef Jennifer Hill Booker
Chef Lara Lyn Carter
Chef Holly Chute
​Chef Reid Harrison
Chef David Scarbrough
Chef Kelly Taranto

Chef Jennifer Hill Booker
Chef Booker, Le Cordon Blue-certified chef, cookbook author, reality TV personality, culinary educator, business owner and GA Grown Executive Chef for the GA Department of Tourism and Travel discovered her passion for food early in life. As a little girl cooking beside her mother, grandmother and aunts she learned that through food she could touch people’s hearts and bring smiles of happiness.
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Weaving her love of traditional Southern cuisine with her belief in incorporating healthy, seasonal foods and her classic French training Chef Jennifer created a unique style of cooking that she termed Modern Southern Healthy Cuisine with a French Accent. Her first cookbook, Field Peas to Foie Gras: Southern Recipes with a French Accent. (Pelican Publishing, 2014) includes original recipes that the home cook can easily prepare for the family.
Her second cookbook, Dinner Deja Vu: Southern Tonight.  French Tomorrow is scheduled to launch in the spring of 2017. This work looks at a fun way to save time cooking by offering two recipes for a dish made with the same ingredients. Leftovers were never so delicious!
Chef Jennifer is fearless in her dedication to bring the best in cooking to her audience from creating recipes, to teaching culinary arts, presenting at live cooking demonstration, keynote-speaking engagements and in the digital world where she engages with her online community. Competing on Food Network’s Cutthroat Kitchen with host Chef Alton Brown, Chef Jennifer demonstrated her creativity and tenacity to the Food TV world when she made it to the final round. 
 She is a member of James Beard Foundation, the Atlanta chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier International, the Georgia Restaurant Association, Slow Foods, and Georgia Organics. Chef Jennifer contributes original recipes to such publications as Garden & Gun, Atlanta Magazine, Essence Magazine, Jezebel, Southern Seasons, Urban Socialites and Basil Magazine.
Chef Jennifer spends her free time in her kitchen, garden, or the local farmer’s market. She currently resides in Lilburn, Georgia with her two daughters Jenelle and Regine along with their KorgieJack, Pudge.Chef
 
 
Lara Lyn Carter
Born and raised in Georgia, Lara Lyn Carter is no stranger to Southern hospitality. Her strong Southern roots, and affinity for cooking, inspired her to pursue a career that would allow her to share her passion of southern entertaining with others in a way not yet seen on TV or bookshelves.
With extensive experience, and a wealth of classic Southern recipes with a twist under her belt, Lara Lyn went on to create and host Savor the Good Life, a television program dedicated to showcasing the history of Southern entertaining and cuisine. The show, airing on WALB, the NBC and ABC affiliate for southwest Georgia, was a glowing success and was honored with an award from the National Association of Broadcasters. 
In 2014, Lara Lyn published her first cookbook Southern Thymes Shared, a guide to entertaining, complete with themed menus ranging from Easter dinner to football kick-off parties. The book, co-written with wine expert Doc Lawrence, also features handpicked wine pairings to complement each menu, ensuring a flawless entertaining experience.
With a large following, and established reputation in Georgia as the go-to authority on Southern entertaining, Lara Lyn’s new show Thyme for Sharing with Lara Lyn Carter launched on Georgia Public Broadcasting as part of the summer lineup in 2015. Lara Lyn also launched a line of her very own sauces, Wicker and Whisk, in May 2015. 
Whenever Lara Lyn gets a break from her busy schedule, she enjoys spending as much time as possible with her husband and three sons or indulging in a great book.
 
 
Chef Holly Chute
Chef Chute is the executive Chef for the Georgia Departments of Agriculture and Economic Development. In this role, she represents the state’s largest economic sector, while serving as a liaison between Georgia’s farmers/ commodity producers and the food service industry. She is one of the most visible faces of the popular Georgia Grown Program and appears regularly at festivals and community events.
Prior to this, Holly was executive chef of the Georgia Governor's Mansion under six administrations: Governor George Busbee, Governor Joe Frank Harris, Governor Zell Miller, Governor Roy Barnes, Governor Sonny Perdue, and (current) Governor Nathan Deal. This led one political observer to remark," Georgia Republicans and Democrats can agree on at least one thing: Holly's cooking."
Over the past 33 years, Holly has welcomed foreign heads of state, former US presidents, Supreme Court justices... even members of England's royal family with her authentic Southern style that showcases Georgia's fresh agricultural products. She has cooked alongside many celebrity chefs, including Cat Cora, Todd English and Paula Dean.
While people mistake Holly as a native Southerner, her skills with an iron skillet were learned on the job. She was raised on Long Island, New York and received a degree from the Culinary Institute of America.
 
Holly has been featured in a segment of “Flip my Food” with Chef Jeff, Good Day Atlanta, Cooking with Dr. Oz and several segments of Atlanta & Company.
 
Reid Harrison
Reid’s culinary career started after he decided to take a year off from college where he was on path to become a math teacher, until he took Calculus II. It was during this year off from school that Reid started working for Chef Paul Harpin (former personal chef to Mick Jagger and Elton John). It was here that his culinary passion was sparked and he decided to attend the famed Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School in Chicago.
 
Upon completion of the culinary program, Reid started as a cook in a large-scale restaurant in Chicago, then as a chef manager of his own restaurant at the young age of 22 in the former Sears Tower (now Willis Tower).
 
Reid returned to Georgia and began to hone his skills of all things culinary. He helped to open a local franchise, catered private events, preformed cooking demos, worked at one of middle Georgia's finest restaurants, and helped to promote local community garden projects to help increase access to wholesome food. It is Reid's love and passion not just for food, but where it comes from that inspires him to continually take care of and pride in the way he prepares and preserves the seasons harvest.
 
 
Chef David Scarbrough
Originally from Tifton, Georgia, Chef David Scarbrough began his culinary career like many chefs do, very early on in the kitchen of his mother and grandmothers. Southern staples were plentiful, and he was influenced also by cooking shows on PBS. He was captivated by elegant platings and silky sauces, and the wheels began to turn but to no avail. There were no restaurants serving the dishes like he saw on TV in Tifton, and this was before the Internet was the instant resource it is today. Eager to learn though, he began working in restaurants at age 16. He entered college, and with culinary schools few and far between, chose to pursue a degree in biology from Valdosta State University.
    
Still passionate about food, Scarbrough moved to Boulder, Colorado where he attended Culinary School of the Rockies. He also studied in Auvignon, France where he completed a stage at Auberge le Chevalier, and became fascinated with the less commercialized processes surrounding restaurants and food.
    
Upon graduation, he began his professional career at The Greenbriar Inn in Colorado. He later moved to Birmingham, Alabama to work for Chef Frank Stitt, a recipient of multiple James Beard Awards, at Highlands Bar and Grill and Bottega. The concepts and ideas that were brought to light in France were a reality in Stitt’s restaurants. Everything was fresh from the farm, the field, or the sea. The values and ideals learned from Stitt influenced the young Chef tremendously. After leaving Birmingham, he moved to Savannah and to his first Sous Chef position at Cha Bella, the only farm to table restaurant in Savannah at the time. Here he further cultivated his love for fresh, locally sourced ingredients.
   
After leaving Savannah, he cooked  with the Hilton in Tifton, and then on to St Simons Island, where he worked for Chef Dave Snyder at Tramici.  After a couple of years with Snyder, Scarbrough accepted a position as Chef de Cuisine at Sea Island Resorts. He operated the Beach Club restaurants for 3 years, managing a kitchen staff of 32 cooks.
    
In January 2015, Scarbrough and his wife, Jennifer, pursued their dreams and opened The LOCAL kitchen and bar in his hometown of Tifton, Georgia. They provide locally sourced produce, cheeses, meats, and seafood, in a fun, fresh, exciting way. Dishes like alligator tikka masala and chicken liver and pecan truffle pate are just two examples of Chef Scarbrough’s unique take on local Southern staples with a twist.
 
Chef Kelli Taranto
Chef Taranto graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in Atlanta with an externship at The Cloister on Sea Island. Kelli took her first position as a Chef for the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead, then moved to Philadelphia where she worked at Le Bec-Fin. Kelli continued living in Pennsylvania where she piloted an in-house pastry program for 750 residents at White Horse Village. Chef Taranto has since returned to Georgia and lives in Americus as the pastry chef for Bittersweet.