In the hands of Meet Tha Saints co-founders Asia Carter and Alliah Smith, their compound butter flavors, and the business they’ve built, are both anchored in love.
Partners in business as well as in life, the duo met and later formed Smith & Carter Catering Company in January 2017 to further explore their passion for food and to blend their Northern and Southern styles of cooking while also working in their respective careers.
“We actually got together over our love of food,” shares Smith, a native of Newark, New Jersey. Carter, who has familial roots in New Orleans, agrees, noting, “It was like a match made in heaven.”
Smith’s professional background is in education, but credits her zeal for cooking to her late mother, a phenomenal home cook.
In contrast, Carter comes from a generational line of chefs. “We owned restaurants and bars in New Orleans back in the day. We’ve really come through a lot of different key parts of this culinary world.”
A Flavorful Solution
Currently residing in New Jersey, the duo created a menu for Smith & Carter Catering Company that showcased their distinct regional cooking styles. But the rigors of their culinary business soon began to take its toll on the couple.
“We started doing private chef gigs, going to homes and preparing meals for couples and families to bring that restaurant experience,” relates Smith. “We were lugging all this equipment and I was like, ‘Okay, we need to figure out a way to cut down on all this that we’re carrying.’ So, we ended up doing different compound butter flavors to go along with whatever we were cooking.”
Carter adds that cooking with compound butter flavors not only helped cut down on the cooking equipment and ingredients they carried to clients’ homes but also added amazing flavors to their dishes.
“Compound butters are basically a butter base that has your seasonings or whatever you choose to put in it,” Carter explains. “You shouldn’t have to add too much to it. So, it’s the easiest thing in the kitchen for a professional chef, for a home cook [to use]. You can do whatever you want with these butters.”
“We ended up giving them away as thank you gifts to our clients,” relates Smith about their compound butter flavors, the first of which was the Cajun Garlic flavor. “And people started to ask, ‘How can I get this? I need this.’ And that’s how it all came about.”
By Jocelyn Amador
