Not many chefs will tell you painting an automobile is the same as preparing a dish, but Jeff “Chef Jeff” McCraw says just that.
“Mixing paint is the visual version of building a recipe,” says McCraw, 55, who spent more than 35 years in the automobile collision repair business before moving across the street to become executive chef at his girlfriend Whitney Fullerton’s restaurant, Chef Jeff’s, at 1825 Vanderhorn.
McCraw feels the area needed a restaurant. “We’re right at Covington Pike. You’ve got car dealers. You’ve also got industrial supply places, HVAC suppliers, warehouses — a lot of companies.” He did the demographics and discovered that “11,000 people punch in from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. And there’s no place to eat out there.” And that doesn’t include shoppers.
Since going to work at Chef Jeff’s, McCraw says, “I’ve gotten a regular following that is very faithful.” The restaurant serves breakfast and lunch Monday through Friday, but McCraw will hold a pop-up with 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. seatings on September 11th.
Describing his fare, McCraw says, “There’s a twist on everything. We’re all clean, whole food. We’re all scratch. We don’t use anything canned. We don’t use anything processed. We don’t buy anything cooked. We use hand-cut fries. We cut them and blanch them. We brine and smoke our own meat.”
Along with his smoked turkey and other sandwiches on the menu, diners will find McCraw’s “Memphis Reuben”. It’s similar to the classic pastrami sandwich, but it’s on grilled sourdough focaccia instead of rye bread.
And, he says, “We’re a sourdough bakery, too.” McCraw makes his sourdough bread from a 236-year-old starter named “Isabelle,” which he got from a friend in Washington state. “I already had a two-year-old starter on my own. So we made a hybrid with hers.” He uses sourdough in his cinnamon rolls, hoagies, hamburger buns, and fried pies.
McCraw is a purist when it comes to ingredients. “Even when they say ‘organic,’ I don’t buy it. We try to get our hands on everything local we possibly can.”
Art was his first creative expression as a child. He took classes at the old Memphis Academy of Arts (before it became the Memphis College of Art) from the third to sixth grades. “I did it all,” he says. But he was “rushed and messy. I would make a mess of anything on paper. So, sculpture ended up being my thing.”
McCraw began cooking for his family when he was eight years old. “I was a latchkey kid. Honestly, I didn’t like hearing my mother complain about having to come from work and clean and cook dinner.” And, he says, “anything you wanted to eat, you had to cook it.”
McCraw’s first culinary creation was pizza. “I cut the crust off of some bread and rolled it flat with a rolling pin, put cheddar cheese, and made a pizza with lunch meat on it.”
He continued the Italian cuisine route with the spaghetti he made for his first family dinner. “My mother had a celebrity cookbook. This was Sammy Davis Jr.’s recipe for spaghetti.” It was sweet. “It had about a tablespoon [of sugar] in a two-pound ground beef batch.”
McCraw still loves “anything Italian. I was really interested in hand-rolled pasta. By the time I was 10, I was doing that. And making tortellinis stuffed with ricotta and pesto.”
One of his greatest inspirations was On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by Harold McGee. “He was a scientist, but he had a big passion for cooking.” McGee’s topics included “what chemical reactions were going on that caused browning in meat. Once I got onto that and learned how emulsions work, I stopped using recipes.” Oil and eggs, for example, create an emulsion called mayonnaise. McCraw discovered he “had a natural understanding of it.”
He originally wanted to be an architect. “I really liked mechanical drawing,” he says, adding, “I never thought I would cook for a living.” He even considered becoming a lawyer when he entered Memphis State University. But, he says, “I dropped out and started an auto detailing shop.” His business, “Perfection Auto Detail,” grew into a “pretty big business.”
McCraw later did auto detailing and car cleaning at a car dealership until he was hired by a company that did paint touch-ups for auto dealers. “That’s where I learned that I had a natural knack for painting and mixing paint and fixing wrecked cars.”
Yet he continued to cook. “Just at home. And I always catered.” He’d barbecue and do other cuisine at events. “I started cooking for groups like that when I was 19. It started with cooking for friends. And friends of friends wanted me to cook for them.” Eventually, McCraw also got jobs — and enjoyed them — working as a line cook at the old The Elegant Farmer and The Grove Grill. “I like the pressure. I like a really high demand.”
McCraw still caters, something he wants to develop even more. “The mission of this place is to have a kitchen plant that runs 24 hours a day. The restaurant would be just one of the outlets.” He also wants to do more baking, which he began doing as a child.
McCraw was running his own body shop near Covington Pike when he “realized how many people were over here and there was nothing to eat.” While he was still operating the body shop, McCraw and Fullerton began operating “this little restaurant across the street.”
On July 1st, 2025, McCraw began working at the restaurant full time. He describes his fare as “soul food — for lack of a better word. Meatloaf, hamburger steak. Our lasagna does really well when we run it.” Other popular items include his grilled chicken avocado club sandwich. A recent special was his fried green tomato and pimento cheese BLT. He also makes his own rubs, dressings, jellies, and sauerkraut.
He does meal prep three days a week and a “clean version of a Lunchables” for kids, which might include pizza made with pepperoni, fresh mozzarella, and sourdough bread.
“I love to share what I’ve learned about gut health,” McCraw says. “I love coming up with new ways to do it.” He created a pecan pie with a “zero glycemic index” that includes honey, blue agave, and monk fruit.
Nowadays, McCraw has no desire to trade mixing up a batch of red marinara for mixing up a batch of red touchup paint. The auto business is a thing of the past. “I think it’s evolved away from me.”
