On Silver and Cherry Iocovozzi’s first trip collectively, they roasted a complete pig. Okay, it wasn’t technically a trip—they had been catering a marriage within the Nice Smoky Mountains. However for 2 younger restaurant individuals within the early weeks of a then long-distance courtship, it would as properly have been a honeymoon. They towed a smoker up a mountain, crashed in a tiny rented cabin, and stayed up all evening protecting the low hearth underneath the hog smoldering. “It was so romantic,” Silver gushes. “We had been wearing holey T-shirts and cowboy hats, in love and fooling around. It was the most effective days of our lives.”
Loads has modified for the couple within the 5 years that adopted. Cherry left Brooklyn and joined Silver in Asheville, NC. They launched Love Songs, a pop-up dinner sequence showcasing Silver’s distinctive method to Filipino cooking and Cherry’s considerate pure wine pairings. They received married in June 2022 and fewer than a month later opened Neng Jr.’s, the 18-seat brick-and-mortar evolution of their pop-up that rapidly gained nationwide acclaim—together with a spot on this journal’s 2023 Finest New Eating places listing. And so they’re aiming to open Concord, a mix wine retailer and karaoke bar, in an area adjoining to the restaurant by the top of this yr.
However in different methods little or no has modified. A lot of Silver and Cherry’s life collectively appears like an extension of that lengthy, delirious, lovestruck evening within the mountains—having one of the best time tending to everybody else’s good time. After they’re not cooking and pouring wine for friends on the restaurant, it’s not unusual to search out the Iocovozzis showering buddies and family members with that very same hospitality at house. “Our home is certainly the gathering place,” Cherry says. “Our buddies name it C&S Bar and Grille. Internet hosting is in our bones.” “It’s part of each of our backgrounds, me as a Filipino and Cherry rising up within the South,” Silver provides.
The house they share on a tree-lined road in Asheville’s 5 Factors neighborhood is directly welcoming and strikingly intimate. Each accessible mantel and windowsill is stuffed with sentimental tchotchkes and trinkets. A trophy with a guitar-playing Snoopy above a tiny placard that reads “I CAN’T STOP LOVING YOU.” A gaudy, classic die-cut Valentine’s Day card. Matching trucker hats airbrushed with the phrases Simply Married. Strolling by to the yard, one may count on a path of rose petals resulting in a desk for 2 and a chilly bottle of Champagne. Besides on this specific night, the lengthy farmhouse desk of their leafy yard was set for 14—and felt all of the extra romantic for it.
The Iocovozzis had simply celebrated their second marriage ceremony anniversary the day earlier than (with a highway journey to Dollywood, naturally), which lent the gathering an particularly celebratory temper. Cherry doled out chilly martinis from an outsized classic cocktail shaker whereas friends helped themselves to a Dionysian platter of ripe fruit. Silver put the ending touches on his smoked tomato sauce and ushered everybody to the desk. The dinner that night was informal, familial—pasta, Caesar salad, peel ’n’ eat shrimp—the form of unfussy meals that sings within the palms of an incredible chef. Moved, maybe, by the spaghetti, the desk broke out right into a rousing refrain of Nat King Cole’s “L-O-V-E.” Looooove is greater than only a gaaaaame for 2…. “It’s a recreation for 14!” Cherry referred to as out to cheers and clinking wine glasses.
A sense of comfy intimacy hung within the air. “Whenever you’re internet hosting, you get to create a world for the night that all of us get to exist in collectively and really feel protected,” Cherry mused. “There’s nothing extra particular than being in that bubble.”
