When co-owners Eric Ferguson and Cat Carter came up with a concept for L’Ostrica restaurant, they knew they wanted to serve a tasting menu based on seasonal ingredients in an intimate setting. Looking back almost a year since the restaurant’s opening, it’s as if their guests know what it’s like to be invited to one of their dinner parties.
Carter nods at the idea as she describes what her dinner parties have been like the past 20 years on the Charlotte scene as a food writer, founder of “Charlotte Edible” magazine, brand strategist and now restaurant owner.
Her chef friends, including Ferguson after he moved back to town and they began dating, would show up and roll up their sleeves. Joe Bonaparte, who ran the national culinary program for the Art Institutes, including in Charlotte where Ferguson trained, would come with ingredients.
“I always say he’s the most talented chef you’ve probably never heard of,” Carter said. “He would show up with a cooler of fresh fish. We’d roast it on the grill, and literally every pot and pan were in use.”
She and Ferguson recreated that scene in a 38-seat restaurant they named the Italian word for oysters. While not only pleasing their guests, they continue to challenge themselves. They use a seasonal menu with fresh local ingredients and a global sensibility.
“It’s fun because we’re constantly learning,” Ferguson said. “…and it never gets old.”
In addition to their tasting menu, which can go up to 10 courses, they also feature a la carte dining at the bar. They have a grab-and-go café market and a cocktail program featuring seasonal ingredients too.
Their menu is as wide-ranging as their backgrounds. Ferguson grew up in Minot, North Dakota, a town of about 45,000 people 50 miles from the Canadian border. He was a senior at the University of North Dakota when he had an epiphany. “I broke my scraper on my windshield when I was scraping one morning going to class,” he said. “I kicked my car. I broke my toe, and I was like ‘I’m out.’”
Ferguson was classically trained in French cooking techniques, fell in love with making pasta in Italy and has worked at restaurants in San Francisco and Charlotte and owned one in Oregon's wine country. Carter’s mother is Korean, her father American and she was born in Okinawa, Japan. As a child of a military father, she lived in Italy and Germany before settling in Maryland. On any given night, guests can taste Asian, Italian, German and Southern influences. For Ferguson, the origin of flavors and the range of cooking techniques sets L’Ostrica apart.
“The tasting menus are meant to showcase ingredients or preparations people have never tried,” Ferguson said. “We might serve something you've had here many times in Charlotte, but not like this because of the influences we can bring together.”
They built a recent menu around sake, the Japanese beverage made from fermented rice. They created another with locally-grown tomatoes as the centerpiece.
"We’re curing a tomato like you would a piece of meat and smoking it like you would a piece of meat and turning that into our BLT course,” Ferguson said.
He meant “BLT” in name only because there’s no bacon or bread. “People are blown away because there’s absolutely no meat,” Carter said.
One of their most popular dishes is a grain bowl with an Italian grain, a Chinese purple rice and a Carolina gold rice, cooked separately, then tossed in a Korean doenjang sauce. It’s topped with a soy-cured egg yolk and brightened with baby Japanese mushrooms and melted spring onions.
“It’s an explosion of flavor and texture,” Carter said. “People say, ‘Wow, I never thought about rice like that.’”
Both Carter and Ferguson enjoy interacting with guests and talking about their choices. They love how guests linger for three, sometimes four hours to eat. It’s why they designed the restaurant with a “plating table” as the focal point. Guests can watch them put finishing touches on plates almost like it’s a kitchen island in their own home.
“Our big focus is not just the food but the hospitality behind that,” Ferguson said. “And it's the storytelling behind it.”
Through interactions with guests, they decided to include a shorter tasting menu for couples with a show to get to, and they’ve added Sunday suppers for those looking for a more casual, family-style option. Their weekly Sunday themes provide another example of the dinner-party feel. One recent Sunday, L’Ostrica served crab cakes because Carter was homesick for Maryland.
“The tasting menus are meant to showcase ingredients or preparations people have never tried.”
“Our big focus is not just the food but the hospitality behind that.”