Justin Fox Burks
Team members at Inspire Community Café include Chef Terrance Whitley, Kristin Fox-Trautman, and Tamika Whitley and, in the back row, Tevin Whitley, Charlena Branch, and Jacqueline Chandler.
Familiar foods take a nutritious turn at Inspire Community Cafe.
Order a quinoa bowl with lots of veggies, I say to myself as I drive to Inspire Community Café, located next to the Save a Lot store at Sam Cooper and Tillman. I repeat the words again, like a cleansing mantra, because it’s midway through the holidays, and a carbohydrate hangover already weighs me down.
Inside the café — a charming nook of a place with mantras of its own — I read the appealing menu descriptions, scrawled across a chalkboard in pastel-colored bubble letters: orange for smoothies; pink for breakfast; and green for dishes at dinner and lunch. I spot three different bowls made with quinoa or rice, and as I consider the choices, a server directs my attention to the café’s seasonal specials. Oh, happy day! Here’s a Harvest Bowl, a fall bounty of Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, cranberries, and kale. But there’s more on the menu as well, and my attention soon strays to pumpkin pancakes. They are golden and pillowy in the menu’s photo and topped with candied pecans and whipped cream.
Every aspect of Inspire Community Café, from menu to décor, reflects the intent to build relationships across ethnic, cultural, and economic divides.
Pumpkin and pecans are healthy, I sheepishly explain to my lunch-mate Teri, as we slurp up frothy lattes from cups the size of bowls. Indeed, my pancakes are nutritious and filling like the café’s other menu items, all made-to-order with local ingredients.
Justin Fox Burks
Dishes like a black bean bowl with vegetables and chicken define the healthy and accessible menu at Inspire Community Café.
“Fresh, simple, delicious, and accessible are our menu’s key concepts,” explains co-founder Kristin Fox-Trautman. “Nothing on our menu is super complex. We want everyone to be able to find something they recognize and really enjoy.”
Consider the café’s quesadillas served with pineapple salsa. They come in four different ways, including four-cheese and slow-cooked chicken with barbecue sauce. The café’s chipotle chili, beef or vegetarian, is another customer favorite, thanks to fragrant bowls loaded with beans, vegetables, fresh cilantro, and shredded cheddar cheese. “We have customers who come in multiple times a week just to eat the chili,” Fox-Trautman says. “It’s been so popular that we sold chili all summer long.”
Making people feel comfortable is important to Fox-Trautman and to Chef Terrance Whitley, Charlena Branch, Jacqueline Chandler, and Tevin Whitley, the cafe’s co-founders. The restaurant’s team, which also includes Trazell Coleman and other Whitley family members, Tamika and Tamarcus, opened the restaurant last January with a dual purpose. They wanted to shape a business model built on shared responsibilities, profit-sharing, and living wages and to use food to connect Binghampton with other Memphis neighborhoods.
Every aspect of Inspire Community Café, from menu to décor, reflects the intent to build relationships across ethnic, cultural, and economic divides. The word “welcome” headlines the chalkboard in five different languages: English, Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, and Swahili. Sturdy tables — built by team members out of pallet wood — move easily to accommodate gatherings of any size. There are also loveseats, framed affirmations (“Choose Joy”), and shelves filled with children’s books. “We feel honored to be part of this community, and being located on a busy corridor draws people in from all over Memphis,” Fox-Trautman says. “It’s a win-win for all of us.” — Pamela Denney
Inspire Community Café
510 Tillman St., Suite 110, 901-509-8640
Food: Familiar foods like pancakes and chicken salad team up with more exotic vegetarian fare like chia seed breakfast pudding. “We soak chia seeds in unsweetened coconut milk, and they become a pudding,” explains co-founder Kristin Fox-Trautman. Even better: Breakfast is served all day.
Three to Try: Rose-colored hibiscus tea, avocado toast made with brioche bread, and Costa Rican black bean quinoa bowl with chicken and roasted sweet potatoes.
Ambience: Inspire Café brims with sunshine from the friendly staff and the café’s plate-glass windows that let in natural light on two sides.
Extras: Meals-to-go for a family of four include options such as fresh salad, chipotle three-bean and beef chili, and corn chips with a four-cheese blend. Call by 4:30 p.m.; pick up by 6. The café also is available for private parties, with or without catering.
Prices: Coffee and tea ($2 to $4.25); smoothies ($5.75 to $6.50); breakfast ($4 to $7.50); lunch and dinner ($5-$8).
Open: Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Closed Sunday.
Justin Fox Burks
Chef Conrad Phillips(right), preparing cheeseburgers on brioche buns, describes his cooking as a mash-up of styles and ethnic influences.
Caritas Café Builds Community with Fellowship and Food.
Tucked inside the Binghampton neighborhood in East Memphis, Caritas Community Center and Café is a surprise, especially to first-time customers like me.
The building’s exterior is made of brick, and a sign outside with block letters announces the organization’s next event. Beneath the logo is the phrase, “Where friends and neighbors break bread together.”
Walking inside, a cafeteria-like atmosphere greets me. A hodgepodge of wooden chairs and tables sprawls throughout the room, and paintings by local artists mask the room’s white walls. A customer plays the piano in the back corner, and sunlight trickles in from the wall of windows spread across the restaurant’s north side.
“I love cooking because I love pleasing people and making people happy with food,” Conrad Phillips explains.
Simply put, Caritas feels like a place where I could kick off my shoes, people watch, and read, but like most customers I’ve come here to eat.
To order, I walk to the counter and receive a number, much like a deli. The staff — a friendly bunch who seem determined to please — range from retirees to college students who keep up with their schoolwork while working the register.
Justin Fox Burks
The grilled cheese sandwich moves beyond the ordinary with a three-cheese combination of Swiss, cheddar, and Boursin Gournay.
“Half the people who work here are paid employees,” executive director Kristin McMillin says. “The other half of our group are volunteers, so we are a volunteer-run organization.”
Nearby farmers who supply locally grown produce and grass-feed beef are part of the mix as well, contributing to Caritas’ over-arching mission to serve farm-to-table food prepared with a gourmet flare to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay.
Most of the dishes at Caritas range from $6 to $12. The menu, which changes daily, features an array of options, including sandwiches (BLT with guacamole! four-cheese grilled cheese!) and plate lunches with scrumptious sides like sorghum glazed carrots and braised collard greens.
I order pasta Bolognese, which is the blue plate special most Tuesdays. Bacon, ground beef, ground pork, garlic, red wine, rosemary, and tomatoes come together for an authentic Italian sauce plated with locally produced rigatoni from Tamboli Pasta. The Bolognese is a signature dish crafted by Spencer McMillin, who stepped down as head chef to take on more of a consulting role. The new chef de cuisine, Conrad Phillips, is a former chef at a senior living facility who wants to have an impact outside the corporate world. “I love cooking because I love pleasing people and making people happy with food,” he explains.
He started helping McMillin on Saturdays and found his time at Caritas to be the most relaxing part of his week. When McMillin left in November, Phillips jumped at the opportunity to lead the Caritas kitchen.
“We, of course, want him to make his imprint too,” Kristin McMillin says about their new chef.
Phillips describes his cooking as all-American, a cooking style that reflects the country’s different cultures and ethnicities. He explains more fully with some of the dishes he is adding to the menu: pork belly melt with locally made muscadine jam and a house salad of wild arugula, goat cheese, candied pecans, and dried cranberries all dressed in a tangy balsamic vinaigrette.
“There’s soon to be some candied bacon on the menu in honor of one of our young customers,” Phillips explains. “The only thing he will eat is bacon.” — Grace Baker
(Editor’s Note: Grace Baker is a student food writer with the Department of Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Memphis.)
Caritas Cafe
2509 Harvard Ave., 901-327-5246
Food: Dishes at Caritas Café are Southern-inspired and made with farm-fresh ingredients. Soups change daily, and blue plate specials are particularly good. Try Brunswick stew, chicken with purple potato mash, pig ear gravy, and sautéed collards, or coq au vin, a French dish of chicken with red wine sauce popularized by Julia Child.
Three to Try: Sloppy Joe with tomato sauce, Marmilu Farms beef burger on a brioche bun, and roasted potato salad tossed with mayonnaise, olive oil, and Cavender’s All Purpose Greek Seasoning.
Ambience: The name Caritas says it all. The word is Latin for “love for all,” says executive director Kristin McMillin. “In Spanish, it means little hats, but we go by love for all.”
Extras: The café offers a “pay-it-forward” program, where a $10 donation covers the cost of a meal for a customer who cannot afford to pay. Caritas also accepts clothing donations in exchange for a 10 percent discount off a meal.
Prices: Blue plate specials ($12), soup and salads ($3-$9), sandwiches and burgers ($6 to $10), sides ($3.50), desserts ($1.50 to $3.50).
Open: Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. Closed Sunday.
(Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified chef de cuisine Conrad Phillips as Matthew Schweitzer. Memphis magazine regrets the error.)
