Two things have always been constant in Carla Pallotta’s life: food and family. The North End native was not only born in Boston’s legendary Italian neighborhood, she was also raised there by a mother who hosted many dinners for her friends and family. Pallotta remembers watching her mother cook all day for guests and the sights and scents of her family’s kitchen filled with members from both sides and lots of food. It’s no wonder she would eventually find herself as chef and part-owner of NEBO, one of the busiest and best Italian restaurants in Boston.
With her sister Christine at her side, Pallotta left a career as a hair colorist and opened Nebo in June of 2005 in the North End despite not having any prior restaurant experience. Shorthand for “North End Boston,” NEBO offered a dining experience as authentic and comfortable as one at their mother’s kitchen table in the North End. It soon became a favorite restaurant for neighbors, visiting celebrities, and athletes from the Celtics, Bruins, Patriots, and Red Sox. In the spring of 2013, eight years after opening the original location, the sisters set their sights on a dream space on Atlantic Wharf, where they built a restaurant – twice the size of the original NEBO – from the ground up.
Though the restaurant is no longer technically located in the North End it still has the same familiar, familial feel of the North End kitchen that Pallotta grew up eating in.
