When Christine Pallotta decided her days as a hair colorist were numbered, she decided to open a restaurant and turned to her family for inspiration. She knew she wanted the menu to reflect her Italian upbringing and her mother’s cooking and she wanted to share ownership of the restaurant with her sister, Carla.

Family and food have always been an important part of life for Christine and she can still remember waking up to the ‘flap!’ of pasta hitting the rolling pin as her mother prepared dinner for friends and family in their North End kitchen (it was an all-day activity). Gathering her childhood experiences and recipes straight from the source (her mother and women in Puglia) she and her sister opened up NEBO in 2005, not far from where the two grew up. Since then it has become a favorite of locals and visitors alike because of the homey, comforting Italian dishes and commitment to quality ingredients.

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 (and her sister) grew up eating in.