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Cloudy with periods of rain. High 58F. Winds ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%..
Cloudy with periods of rain. Low 48F. Winds NNE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
Updated: March 10, 2025 @ 3:09 pm
Chef Vincent Farro performs for guests of the Craven Social at Bootleggers and Barrels, 417 B S. Front St., during the first pop-up restaurant experience.
From left, Ken Perkins, Debbie Tyndall, Keith Tyndall and Lessi Lonstad sit inside Bootleggers and Barrels, 417 B S. Front St., for the first Craven Social pop-up dinner, hosted by Chef Vincent Farro and his wife, Ann Farro.
Chef Vincent Farro, left, and Ann Farro at Bootleggers and Barrels, 417 B S. Front St., after hosting the first Craven Social pop-up restaurant experience.
Chef Vincent Farro performs for guests of the Craven Social at Bootleggers and Barrels, 417 B S. Front St., during the first pop-up restaurant experience.
From left, Ken Perkins, Debbie Tyndall, Keith Tyndall and Lessi Lonstad sit inside Bootleggers and Barrels, 417 B S. Front St., for the first Craven Social pop-up dinner, hosted by Chef Vincent Farro and his wife, Ann Farro.
Chef Vincent Farro, left, and Ann Farro at Bootleggers and Barrels, 417 B S. Front St., after hosting the first Craven Social pop-up restaurant experience.
Chef Vincent Farro, owner of A Pinch of Love Catering, and New Bern businessman Dale Overbee partnered to bring a pop-up restaurant downtown, Craven Social.
Overbee owns several local businesses like Blackbeard’s Triple Play Restaurant and Bar, Pirate’s Cove Triple Play Seafood and Oyster Bar and Bootleggers and Barrels, which are all located on South Front Street.
Through the partnership, Overbee has allowed Farro to use Bootleggers and Barrels, at 417 B S. Front St., as a venue for dinner and cocktail parties. Bootleggers and Barrels is a bar, brewery and distillery that Overbee opened in 2022.
Farro met Overbee about five years ago when COVID-19 hit and bookings were low with A Pinch of Love Catering
“We do private in-home dinners and it really took off,” Farro said. “But when COVID hit, no one was calling me for in-home dinners.”
Farro said he approached Overbee about an open prep position at Bootleggers and Barrels. Overbee looked at Farro in confusion, wondering why a four star chef would apply for a prep position.
“I told him I would come in every morning and everything I do will be perfect because I can’t help it, that’s what I do,” he said. “He looked at me like, ‘What do you want?
“I said, let me use your kitchen for my catering so I don’t have to go rent or build a space. I’ll come in at 6 a.m., do all my catering, I’ll be out before your staff gets here and you get me as an employee.”
Recently, Farro proposed the idea of a pop-up restaurant to Overbee.
Farro and his wife, Ann, will host one Craven Social dinner each month with a different cuisine each time.
On March 4, they served a four course Italian dinner to 32 guests for the first Craven Social event.
The evening started with a welcome cocktail followed by tiger shrimp and crab cakes on a bed of arugala with a creamy shrimp scampi dressing.
The second course had Italian braised pork served over polenta with confit tomatoes. The third course included cannelloni stuffed with Vinnie’s meatballs and mozzarella cheese topped with a meatball, tomato basil sauce and a crispy prosciutto crumble.
The fourth course was a dessert plate with a cannoli puff pastry pinwheel topped with pistachio icing and pistachio nut crumble.
For the next Craven Social dinner, Farro, joined by a special guest chef, will serve Mexican cuisine.
The dinner will be sometime in April, although Farro hasn’t announced a date yet. He will post information about the Craven Social dinners on his personal Facebook page, Vincent Farro.
“The food is important to me and the way it looks it’s important to me,” Farro said “I’ve done three things in my life and the chef thing just gives me the most gratification of all.
“When I sit here and watch everybody it just makes me happy.”
Before Farro became a chef, he worked as a professional musician and a hairdresser.
In the late 1980s, Farro opened a hair salon in his home state of New Jersey, which he ran alongside a partner for 20 years.
“I owned the largest hair salon in New Jersey, I had 80 employees and 37 hairdressers in one salon,” he said. “Eventually, I was tired of doing hair. There was so much money involved but I didn’t want to just walk away.”
Farro said his business partner bought him out of the salon so he could open a restaurant.
Around this time, the Food Network was gaining popularity and his interest in cooking shows led Farro to explore his own culinary skills.
“I would watch Food Network every night and then run to the store to get ingredients,” he said.
Shortly after Farro sold his half of the salon, he opened a 300-seat restaurant in Princeton, N.J., with no prior experience in the restaurant industry.
Farro and his wife ran the restaurant, which served Italian and Mediterranean cuisine, for about 10 years.
“After 10 years, they raised our rent to $20,000 a month, which was crazy,” he said. “We moved down here 10 years ago, our friends moved and we followed them.”
Farro said that as a musician, he was especially drawn to New Bern due to its large live entertainment scene.
After Farro moved to New Bern, he created A Pinch of Love Catering and used Facebook to build the business.
“I was relentless, every time I made something, even if I made it for myself, I plated it nice and took a really nice picture,” he said.
Farro continues to operate his catering business while expanding into New Bern’s restaurant scene with Craven Social dinner pop-ups.
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