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January 8, 2026
A Day in the Life: Cat Carter of L’Ostrica
The many hats she wears as the co-owner of L’Ostrica
by Jacqueline Pennington
Cat Carter has been a passionate member of the Charlotte food scene going on 15 years now. Her evolution over that time has landed her as co-owner and unstoppable force behind one of Charlotte’s most celebrated restaurants, L’Ostrica.
After a longtime passion for food that bloomed in childhood from her parents cooking, Carter took that passion and an interest in the local food scene to start Edible Charlotte magazine in 2011. The magazine was focused on telling stories that spotlight the local and sustainable food culture in the greater Charlotte region. Carter’s impact with the magazine led her to opportunities to write for Charlotte magazine, The Local Palate, and support brands through work with local marketing agency Plaid Penguin.
“I just think that food is this perfect intersection of so many things that capture my attention and my curiosity,” Carter says. “I think you can look at food from a culinary perspective, of course, but also anthropologically: what it means to us as humans, what it means to us socially, what it might mean historically and politically. All of those things are really interesting to me, and I think that there’s always been a through-line.”
In 2017, Carter was thrown a birthday party catered by Bruce Moffett, who brought along the chef at Stagioni at the time to help out. That chef was Eric Ferguson, who today is the chef and co-owner of L’Ostrica alongside her. The inspiration for their restaurant came along while the couple was traveling together years later.
“We went on a trip together to Charleston,” Carter says. “We were crushing a bunch of oysters — I don’t know if you know this, but the name of L’Ostrica means the oyster — and we were at this one restaurant in particular. It had this wonderful neighborhood feel, but it felt sophisticated at the same time. There was just something about the experience there where we started doing hypotheticals, like, what would it look like if we built our own restaurant?”
A daydream on vacation slowly transformed into reality in November of 2023, when Carter and Ferguson opened the doors to their restaurant. A tasting menu format aligned with their vision to showcase the best of what’s in season, offering a fun experience where thought is put into every step from start to finish.
In addition to running their restaurant, Carter just finished the James Beard Foundation’s Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Program, where she was admitted through a highly selective application process. The program is run in collaboration with Cornell University and is an educational, training, and networking program for brick-and-mortar food or beverage business professionals.
It’s difficult to imagine how Carter found the time for the program while also keeping their restaurant up and running. Here is what a day in her life looks like.
7 a.m.: Carter wakes up and gets a jump start on her day right after having her coffee. “The first thing that I do is check emails and post the sandwich of the day,” Carter says. The restaurant’s sandwich of the day is available during lunch hours, and changes daily, with a menu posted on Instagram. “Sometimes I go to the gym before I come into work, so if that happens, I might get in late morning, but otherwise I’m there by about 9-9:15.”
9 a.m.: “From 9-11 a.m., it’s kind of a mixed bag,” Carter says. “This morning, as an example, I met with one of our team members, Adam, about upcoming private events. Then I photographed a new dish for the bar, worked with Eric on refining some dishes that we’re testing, and also responded to some emails related to orders and things like that.”
Despite Ferguson carrying the title of chef, Carter is highly involved in the development of the tasting menu. “I very much have my hands in the menu development,” Carter says. “We come up with all the tasting menus together. We sit down, we brainstorm, and we think about an initial order of things. We talk about the dishes, we refine them together, and then he goes off and he starts testing. Then I go off and start thinking about the wine pairings. I am very much involved with the culinary aspects of L’Ostrica — I’m just not the traditional chef in terms of being on the line. My role switches to being on the floor in the evening.”
12 p.m.: Once lunch service kicks off, Carter may help out on the floor if things get really busy, but for the most part, she is still working on the operational aspect of running the restaurant. “I’m catching up on communications, social media planning, and working on PR stuff,” Carter says. “Then I’m also checking in with the wine program. We’re making sure that we’ve got things in place for the weekend. I start working on the wine selections for Sunday Supper” — the restaurant’s rotating, themed family-style meals — “and then also wherever I can find time, that’s when I’m doing menu development.”
3 p.m.: Carter may snack or have a light breakfast throughout the day, but this is often when she has her first real meal. “Jason owns the majority of our staff meals and he makes some pretty good stuff,” Carter says. “I always love Japanese curry and he makes killer falafel with salad.”
From there, the team starts prepping for dinner service. “There’s a lot of small touches that we’re taking care of,” Carter says. “The back of the house is getting their final touches put together. We’re wrapping up the cookies that go in the take-home bags, we’re printing the menus that go in those bags, and ticking and tying to get ready for service. Closer in, we have lineup and then we start getting the wines prepped for the evening. We’re going over notes from learnings, customer feedback, and making sure that we’re set for opening the doors at 5.”
5 p.m.: It’s hard to believe with all that Carter has accomplished in the day that this is when things kick into high gear with dinner service. “I wear multiple hats there,” Carter says.
“The biggest thing is that my job is to support the team. If the bar’s really busy, then I might be helping out there. If the floor is really busy, then I might be helping out. Just being an extra set of hands or doing one of the wine pairings so that the server can give attention to another table for a second.”
“I think something that’s really beautiful about the style of service that we have is that Eric and I both touch a lot of the tables, if not all the tables. We try to make it dynamic for the guests so that they’re not just hearing from one person the whole time that they’re dining with us. Everybody is trained to talk about the food and I might go and introduce a course here and there to let them hear from ownership.”
“Beyond that, it’s kind of an old school maître d role. I’m interacting with all of these folks because we just want to develop relationships with them and get to know what’s happening, what they’re celebrating with us, what might be a milestone that they’re celebrating, things that we might be able to do to make a special night even more special.”
11:30 p.m.: Carter finally heads home for the day once service wraps up between 11 p.m. and midnight. She takes a minute to wind down before turning in. “By then my brain is pretty shot from heavy amounts of communication verbally and then also through the many channels that I manage. I have to have some time to decompress and wind my brain down, so I might check out a show on Apple TV or something. I might fall asleep watching it.”
In addition to lunch service and the tasting menu L’Ostrica offers Wednesday through Saturday, they have a Sunday Supper tasting menu with a rotating theme. They’ve also started hosting Tuesday takeovers where they have another local chef that may not have a brick and mortar space come and cook in their kitchen. “We love collaborating,” Carter says. “I think it’s just fun to cook with other people in the kitchen and see what they’re doing. Tuesday takeover is a way for us to pay it forward. We know how hard it was to raise money and get a restaurant open.”
As for what’s next for Carter, she just wants to keep making food and sharing it with people. “Eric and I talk about this a lot,” she says. “I think the end goal for us is just to be able to continue cooking for people in some capacity no matter what. And that might not mean cooking for people in a restaurant setting. It was part of our original vision statement. Cook great food, cook it together as a team, and cook it for people. It sounds simplistic, but it’s actually increasingly complex. We’re just motivated by that beautiful exchange of somebody cooking food for you and then you getting to enjoy that. No matter what happens to us next, and we have lots of ideas of where we can go from here, I want that to always be true.”
