“I’m of that culture — a lot of times people aren’t of that culture and they can definitely replicate it, but it’s just different when soul is involved in something,” Robyn Carter says of her low-country cooking.
The chef-owner of the pop-up and catering company Carolina Girl Catering is also of a culture where there was one strict rule for supper: Be there.
“Everybody was home for dinner and always sat at the table,” Carter says.
Her mother, a model of Southern and low-country hospitality, would line the table with shrimp and grits, gumbo, and fixin’s, with friends and neighbors frequently popping in for a meal.
“She always made food for everybody, and there was always a lot of people around, and it was always important,” she says. “It was the center of everything.”
With the love language of food instilled in her from a young age, the Fayetteville, North Carolina, native first entered a commercial kitchen at the age of 15.
"Once I started, I never stopped,” she says.
Now 42, the chef and owner behind Carolina Girl Catering feels like she’s finally found her groove through a solo venture that serves as a travelogue of her cooking journey across the South.
A Johnson & Wales University Charleston graduate, Carter worked in kitchens in Georgia, South Carolina, Florida and Arizona before eventually following the footsteps of dining industry friends and whispers of the growing culinary scene and food truck culture in Austin, Texas.
Wanting to be closer to family, a few months shy of the pandemic’s arrival she relocated to Richmond, a city with an up-and-coming spirit that she compares to the Lone Star State capital.
Although she had already launched her business, it was in Richmond that Carter was able to devote herself to it, the pandemic granting her a moment to fully focus on her vision.
In February of this year she hosted her first local pop-up at Hatch Cafe serving brunch, along with a night at The Jasper dedicated to gumbo garnished with pickled okra — making a dark roux that pays homage to Louisiana culture and Carter’s Cajun roots — followed by a low-country boil months later that sold out within the first hour and appearances at Tabol Brewing, Steam Bell Beer Works, Vasen Brewing, Starr Hill Brewery and the RVA Black Farmers Market.
Offering everything from shrimp and grits — one of the first meals she learned how to cook — to classic cornbread and blue crab hushpuppies, Carter says, “My food is kind of everything everybody loves to eat and wants to eat, but not everybody wants to admit; then I kind of dress it up. It’s comfort dishes with a suit and tie on.”
She serves dishes she grew up eating, but with her own touch, offering vegan options and showcasing local farmers. She currently partners with Sylvanaqua Farms, Autumn Olive Farms, Delli Carpini Farm, Real Roots Food Systems and Oak Top Farm, along with purveyors such as Essential Microgreens and The Mayor for produce and meats.
This Sunday Carter will be featured on the local cooking show “Beyond the Plate,” followed by a pop-up at TBT El Gallo on Monday, Oct. 11, and another at chef and restaurateur Mike Ledesma’s virtual food hall, The Coop, on Oct. 14.
Entering a next chapter in her career, Carter says she’s finally achieved a level of confidence in her cooking, and herself, that she’s proud of.
“I feel like I’ve grown to the point that I’m confident enough to know whatever I do is not failing,” she says. “For so long that’s why I didn’t start; for so long, I was afraid of failing at something, but not doing anything is the actual failing.”
Although Carter has a calendar marked with multiple future pop-up events, the avid cookbook collector has brick-and-mortar dreams, and she believes her food is best enjoyed at a table, in keeping with her family’s dinner mantra when she was growing up.
“I would rather have a sit-down restaurant,” Carter says. “I would love for people to come to my house and eat because that’s where I’m most comfortable.”
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