Cristina McCarter loved to dance growing up. She danced around the kitchen.
Around it, figuratively speaking. As in mostly staying away from it. “I never really liked cooking,” says McCarter. “I just like to eat.”
McCarter now is owner of Feast & Graze, which specializes in cheese and charcuterie boards. It’s also one of the participants in Black Restaurant Week, which runs through October 2nd.
She’s co-owner with Lisa Brown of City Tasting Box, a service that features products ranging from barbecue sauce to popcorn from local restaurants and food artisans.
A native of Memphis, McCarter’s first creative outlet was dancing. She danced all through college — “ballet, majorette, pom, hip-hop.” She still dances on her Instagram posts. “It’s like your workout for the day. It helps you release that energy, whether it’s a bad energy or a good one.”
McCarter never really had to cook. “I married a man who knows how to cook,” she says.
Growing up, McCarter made appetizers. “You can’t really mess that up. I made cheese boards all the time. Or I would do shrimp cocktail and make it pretty.”
Her grandmother made her take etiquette classes. “They would teach us how to formally dine out, how to use your knife and fork, and how to put the napkin in your lap.”
As for working with food, she says, “I had no clue I’d be in this industry.”
McCarter majored in computer science at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga before switching to University of Memphis. “I was a big computer geek.” But she changed her major to marketing. A “Black woman in technology” wasn’t the norm. “We just weren’t very welcomed. It was mostly boys.”
McCarter began taking jobs in the food industry. “I fell in love with it.”
She got a job passing out samples at Costco and, later, helped open a Texas Roadhouse. After graduation, she worked as a marketing assistant at Yelp.
In 2016, McCarter became a “food-preneur.” She began her City Tasting Tours, walking tours of South Main restaurants. “We’d meet at the first restaurant and start eating and drinking and walking our way through the city. Of course, I was telling them about the past, present, and future of the city.”
About a dozen people participated in each tour. “We’d get the chef to come out and give the rundown.”
By the beginning of 2020, the tours were “running successfully. I had 15 or so restaurants signed up, and we did tours every day.” But, she says, “That stopped around March. Then we started doing virtual food tours.”
She and a videographer visited the restaurants. It was “basically like a mini TV clip. We would give them the link to the video and I’d deliver the food to them. Instead of walking around, they sat and did the tour in the comfort of their own home, but still got the experience of the food and learning about the city.”
That June, McCarter stopped the tours and began doing City Tasting Box. She had already launched Feast & Graze as a delivery service in 2019, working out of a tiny Midtown kitchen.
Through Downtown Memphis Commission’s Open on Main initiative, McCarter got a storefront on 55 South Main Street, where she opened Feast & Graze as a brick-and-mortar business last March. She comes up with cheese board ideas, and her chef, RaNeisha Myers, makes them. “I can make things in my head. I’m very creative that way,” she says.
“Definitely the future for me is expanding Feast & Graze. Doing some events every so often. We had our first pop-up Sunday brunch this past week. It was really successful.”
For Black Restaurant Week, she is making The Lunch Bundle. “You choose one of our artisan wraps, chips, and drink for $17.”
McCarter is a Black Restaurant Week fan. “We get to showcase different types of cuisine in Memphis. It’s uplifting to see your community out supporting each other.”
But, McCarter adds, “I definitely want people to see the level we are taking the cheese and charcuterie.”
Justin Fox Burks 