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Nora Tatum was in charge of making sure that dozens of local dental offices were fully staffed, running smoothly, and turning a profit before COVID-19. But when the pandemic caused the practices that she’d overseen for the past two decades to shutter or significantly reduce operating hours overnight, she made an unlikely move: dental consultant to restaurateur. Now, Tatum is the owner and chef of In The Kitchen, a destination for Southern cooking and hospitality in Long Beach.
With more time on her hands after years of jam-packed schedules and extensive travel around Southern California and across state lines, Tatum spent the early months of lockdown where many of us did in her kitchen. Using recipes that she learned from her Dallas-native mother Eva Tatum and her aunt Ruby Rowlett, Tatum started cooking the kind of Southern food she grew up on, both to keep herself busy and to nourish those around her. Though Tatum who moved to South Central Los Angeles when she was five yea