A Tale of Two Kitchens

Food and lifestyle influencer Cara Greenstein overhauled her new home while transforming her Downtown condo into a successful Airbnb.

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The best way to get to know Cara Greenstein is through her blog Caramelized. That’s where she started writing about and photographing her culinary adventures in 2012. Eventually, Greenstein expanded into Instagram, where her sleek style, accessible recipes — and dogs Sawyer and Finn — have attracted a sizable audience.

Greenstein discovered her love of the culinary arts early. “As a kid, I chose to watch the Food Network instead of Disney and Nickelodeon — I was that child,” she says. “At age 10, I loved Emeril Lagasse, Rachael Ray, and Bobby Flay. My mom always had dinner for our family every night, but she did not enjoy cooking, so I wouldn’t say I learned my love of cooking from her — but I did learn the value of a family having a meal together.”

Greenstein says she was self-taught. “I loved watching the demos on the shows, and then when I had my bat mitzvah at age 13, I asked everyone to give me Williams Sonoma gift certificates so that I could actually have some equipment and gadgets I saw on these shows that my parents didn’t have. Because my mom’s like, ‘What more do you need than a pot and a cutting board?’”

A Memphis native, Greenstein attended college at the University of Texas in Austin, where she majored in marketing and public relations. “You always take for granted where you grew up, right? And then you leave and you go to a new city. Austin was an incredible experience, especially as a college student where you’re trying to find your direction, and you’re in a big city with so much happening. … But I was watching Memphis in the rear-view mirror. At the time I was away — 2010 to 2014 — there was some good stuff happening here.”

As graduation approached, she made a decision that might have been surprising four years earlier: returning to her hometown. “I definitely saw the potential here,” she says. “And knowing how much more would be happening in 10 years, I wanted to be part of that progress.”

To be where the action was, she found an apartment Downtown, within walking distance to her job at the public relations firm of Doug Carpenter and Associates, and persuaded her boyfriend Alex Shindler, an Arkansan, to join her. The two married three years later and moved into a brand-new townhouse, part of the new construction rising Downtown.

“I was actually walking one day to work when I saw what became our townhome being built,” she says. “It was this super-interesting contemporary design Phil Woodard was doing on Tennessee Street, and I was so impressed.”

She and Alex became homeowners at age 23, one of four original owners in the development that now boasts more than 30 dwellings. “It’s exciting to see a true neighborhood arise,” she says. “I knew the area well because of work, but it was really exciting to have that opportunity, and we made it a home over the years.”

Living Downtown, Growing up in Public

The townhouse became home base for Caramelized, Greenstein says, and her growing fan base watched as she developed her aesthetic. “I loved the open floor plan,” she says. “I loved the natural light. The design itself was pretty much dictated by the builder, but it is very contemporary — trendy, if you will. And for a rising food blogger, where so much of my life is in front of — or behind — a phone camera, capturing recipes and gatherings around the table, I was looking for something that could achieve that without trying, and I believe the townhouse does that.

“I was very lucky to move into a new space,” she continues. “Essentially, we could dictate paint, colors, backsplash, et cetera, but Phil already had such a great vision for it, I didn’t have to do much at all.”

A west-facing window floods the space with natural light, which not only creates a healthy living space, but is also essential for photography. “We chose a really nice quartz countertop, and I have a beautiful, reclaimed wood table,” she says. “That could serve as my contrasting surface, a backdrop for my dishes. I had that contrast in the space that I used every day, and because of how small it was, my kitchen table was honestly like a second countertop for prep.”

The best way to describe Greenstein’s cooking is “accessible, but elegant.” On Caramelized, one can see her “elevating the everyday” with snacks like pigs in a blanket, which she serves for a holiday party in a wreath of fresh herbs. She created a chicken version of that great Memphis party staple, barbecue nachos. She calls her vegetarian succotash, which includes fresh corn, okra, and Vidalia onions, “summer in a bowl.” She retooled one of her favorite dishes, the Caprese salad, with halloumi, a firm, salty cheese from Greek cuisine.

Purple potatoes give her pot roast a splash of color. Her pecan-encrusted catfish comes with a side dish of corn brulée, a more savory variation on the classic French dessert. She added a little bit of coffee to the grilled flank steak dry rub for tacos last summer, and her mac-and-cheese recipe is made luxurious with lobster and gnocchi. And when exploring cocktails, she gravitates toward margaritas, and created a jalapeño-infused gin rickey.

“I definitely try to experiment, but the way I tend to cook is just very seasonally driven,” Greenstein says. “I like to shop with my eyes at the grocery store and take the produce and then build something around it. To me, presentation is very important because food styling and photography are part of why I love blogging. I kind of take that as my starting point and then think, ‘Okay, how can I build something that is flavorful, but easy?’ I’m not a professionally trained chef, but I enjoy learning different techniques.”

Time for Change

By March 2020, Cara and Alex had been in their townhouse for five years. Then, the pandemic hit. As the couple worked from home and couldn’t access many of Downtown’s amenities during the lockdowns, they began to reconsider their relationship with their first home.

“I think the pandemic really made us, and everyone, reevaluate the definition of a home, the meaning of it, and how multipurpose it truly needs to be in circumstances like that,” Greenstein says. “So, 1,300 square feet is fantastic, but when the livable part of it, excluding the bedrooms, is closer to 500 square feet, and you are doing everything from living, to working, to working out, to trying to mimic the restaurants I missed, and doing all of it in one little space, well …”

Another factor affected her decision. The Greensteins added a second dog to their family. “Sawyer is 70 pounds, and Finn is a mini version at 30 pounds and has twice as much energy,” she says. “Finn was our pandemic puppy. We were on one of our many hundreds of walks during the safer-at-home order, and we were talking about how it would be so great if Sawyer had a pal.”

Dogs are happier with yards to play in, says Greenstein. “We have this adorable little grass patch in the front. It’s like the size of a living room carpet. That worked for the dogs some of the time, but we usually took them on walks, or to the nearby dog park. It was definitely cozy, but it honestly forced me to have a minimalist way of living, because there wasn’t as much room for storage or extra things.”

By the spring of 2021, it was clear they needed a new place. “Not having a yard is always a challenge of living in an urban area,” she says, “but it got to a point eventually where that, coupled with just feeling like the walls were closing in on us, we needed more room to breathe. So we started looking casually, passively at the market for most of 2020 — which, as you know, was a really crazy time to try and buy. It’s still a sellers’ market. Fortunately — miraculously — we came across an off-market opportunity that worked out. In April ’21, we signed a contract knowing that we would be moving, but we wouldn’t actually close until August, because of the seller’s process on their new home build. So because of that, we had this very rare window of time to actually plan before we moved.”

“Patience Is a Virtue”

Their new home in East Memphis is three times the size of the Downtown townhouse. Greenstein enlisted Ann Parker, an interior designer she had met through the annual ArtsMemphis fundraiser Art By Design. “She came to see the house when we were looking into buying it and helped us envision from the beginning how to create a space that worked for us, worked for my blog and business, and served as this studio for me to use and love every single day.”

Greenstein’s studio is her kitchen. “We’re tackling one room at a time,” she says, “and because the kitchen was the priority, we went for it first.”

It was Parker’s idea to knock down a wall between the kitchen and an anteroom to expand the available space and allow for a new window to be installed. “Natural light is a huge attribute that I value with my photography, but also, I just enjoy natural light! We weren’t getting a lot of it in the original floor plan.”

The demolition almost doubled the available square footage, allowing for the installation of an island in the middle of the kitchen, complete with a built-in microwave. “And somehow we repurposed almost every single cabinet in the original kitchen!”

But even with time to plan, creating a thoughtful new space in the chaotic conditions of the pandemic has not been easy. “I would say patience is a virtue,” says Greenstein. “The supply chain is not improving yet. We ordered our refrigerator and range six months ago, and they just arrived. So just recognizing that, planning, and waiting are two very important elements. What Ann taught me through this process is that phasing is a beautiful thing. As you move into a new space and you live in it every day, plans might evolve, things might change. Having flexibility versus prescribing something from the get-go could lead to a really beautiful evolution.”

Old and New

Greenstein and her husband decided not to sell their Downtown townhome, and not just for sentimental reasons. “We wanted to hold onto it,” she says, “because knowing how much development is still underway Downtown, especially with Tom Lee Park and other South Main area developments, we didn’t want to give it up. So we’ve kept the townhouse and are using it as an Airbnb very successfully, already.”

Since their light-filled first home had featured in so many blog posts and Instagram stories, Greenstein decided to leave most of the furnishings when they moved east, making the Airbnb an extension of the Caramelized brand. But she admits returning to the place where she made so many memories is bittersweet.

“There’s something about removing just the decorative items and the personal pieces from the house,” she says. “I walk in and it’s a beautiful space. I almost feel a distance from it, but in a good way.”

Creating a new space for her family has been a positive experience, and has expanded both her definition of her work and her appreciation for her community.

“I’ve been fortunate through Caramelized to meet so many talented people in Memphis,” she says. “We’re such a unique community, where there’s so much collaboration. Caramelized is such a personal brand. It’s easy to just label it as a food blog, but over the years, it truly has become a reflection of my daily life and milestones — especially with Instagram, and the growth of that platform. Creating a new home has become a category of content alone. That makes so much sense to my following, and to the content I’m putting out there. Hosting and entertaining was a growing category that came out of food and recipe development. And now it’s growing further into the furniture selection and the design itself that makes hospitality even more fun.”