Unruliness runs deep in Boston’s food scene. It might not seem that way to a newcomer visiting the city’s well-worn Back Bay brasseries, or tasting a consistently good lobster roll. But every so often, a disruptor comes along that forces Bostonians to wake up, smell the chowder, and remember that this is where one very well-known revolution began. Right now, Alexis Cervasio is that disruptor—and her East Boston Oysters pop-up dinner series is stirring up serious buzz with the city’s in-the-know foodies.

Cervasio grew up in Boston’s North End, an historically Italian neighborhood that is one of the city’s best areas for a good meal. “I don’t remember not being involved with food,” she says. Her family owns the Italian restaurants Antico Forno and Terramia. “My dad also owns vending carts, and I was on the Freedom Trail from the tender age of 10 scooping slush for tourists.” As she puts it, the hustle has been real for as long as she can remember.

Having spent the better part of her twenties managing restaurants in Boston, Cervasio started to feel an entrepreneurial urge. Something about all those staid Back Bay dining rooms and formal Bostonian restaurants seemed a little tired. Then she had the idea to throw a “meet the farmer” event where foodies could sample local oysters, and meet the Bostonian who harvested them. “It really all started because of a love for oysters… I wanted to make things like oysters and caviar more approachable,” Cervasio says. “I thought, let’s put them all out in an all-you-can-eat manner, something that wasn’t really done in Boston with delicacies like that.”

Given her experience in the food industry, finding the right local oysters and chef partners wasn’t the issue. The question was where, and how to produce the abundant event she imagined.

Oddly enough, the answer came to Cervasio while walking through East Boston, one of the city’s post-industrial, somewhat forgotten neighborhoods. Much like Manhattanites’ often snobbish opinions of Brooklyn or Queens, East Boston has long had a reputation for being impossibly hard to get to. But the neighborhood offered a level of charm and flexibility that Cervasio likely would never have found in the city’s more developed and well-worn areas like Beacon Hill or even the South End. East Boston’s landscape is a dream for pop-up events—warehouses, bowling alleys, and auto body repair shops abound. With some delicious food on offer and a little bit of creative decorating, Cervasio thought she could create something the city hadn’t seen before.