Uncle Vinny’s provides farm-to-table Italian food to Narrowsburg

IAN PUGH
Posted 8/30/17

NARROWSBURG, NY — A new restaurant has opened in the heart of Narrowsburg: Uncle Vinny’s, an experience with authentic Italian cuisine as delivered by owner, namesake and veteran …

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Uncle Vinny’s provides farm-to-table Italian food to Narrowsburg

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NARROWSBURG, NY — A new restaurant has opened in the heart of Narrowsburg: Uncle Vinny’s, an experience with authentic Italian cuisine as delivered by owner, namesake and veteran restaurateur Vincenzo Doria. “Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York—one of seven kids in an Italian family in an Italian neighborhood… Back in the early ‘80s, my family relocated to Raleigh, North Carolina. And I’ve been down there for the past 30 years, owned several Italian restaurants there, but I’ve always wanted to own a restaurant in New York. But I didn’t want to own a restaurant on the island or in the city, where you’d be one good Italian restaurant amongst a million Italian restaurants. I like the feel of small towns, where you can get personable, and you can become part of the community, and the community can really accept you as one of them.”

The restaurant is situated in the building that once housed Gerard’s River Grill, and Doria has encountered a warm welcome since opening in July. “We have customers that eat here three, four, five nights a week since we’ve been open, and that shows us that the community has really accepted us… We want to be open, even in the wintertime—January, February, March—we want to be open seven days a week… We want our local customers, as well as tourists, to know that we are here for them. It’s our honor to serve them in good times and in bad times. Harsh winters, beautiful summers—we are here for the community, because they’ve accepted us, and we want to show our appreciation to them.”

The sister location in North Carolina is advertised as a pizzeria and ristorante, but the sign outside Uncle Vinny’s in Narrowsburg declares itself a “farm fresh Italian kitchen,” while a chalkboard inside proudly reads “farm-to-table”—a boast that wasn’t always part of the original plan. “Everywhere you turn, there’s a cheese farmer, there’s a dairy farmer, there’s a chicken farmer,” Doria says. “In North Carolina, it’s not like that. This is the only place that we’ve located where you can actually utilize locally-grown fresh products that are very organic… It’s very refreshing, coming from a chef’s standpoint, to use local products. It’s very big in our industry nowadays, but even restaurants in the city, they are relying on people upstate to deliver down to New York City, where we can go to the farms ourselves and pick our own produce, and actually see it coming out of the ground. It’s amazing.

“We go to the Fulton Fish Market twice a week, and we get our own fish—our fresh domestic calamari, our fresh gulf-stream shrimp… I handpick our own fresh fish, whether it be swordfish or tuna or mahi-mahi. I’m very much a hands-on type of chef [who] utilizes what’s at his disposal. People say, ‘What do you want on the menu that’s great?’ Everything is great on the menu! My name, and my family recipe, and everything stands behind every dish on the menu.”

Uncle Vinny’s is located at 251 Bridge St., open on Sunday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and on Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. For more information, call 845/252-5082.

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