Three minutes before La Farm Bakery’s official opening for its new Creekside Crossing Shopping Center location in Raleigh, last Friday, I stood shivering outside in the 20-degree weather.
I’d come to the bakery to talk to Lionel Vatinet, master baker and La Farm co-owner, about his carbohydrate empire’s latest location. Beside me—also shivering, also punctual—was a man stocking up on bread and pastries ahead of last Friday’s rare snowfall.
$100 later, my fellow La Farm fan walked out with enough carbs to weather any length of winter storm (which, as is often the case in North Carolina, turned out to be not very long). But he wasn’t the only one giddy with excitement about the bakery’s new location: While giving an overview of the weather threat, Friday morning, the WTVD team delighted over the opening.
“La Farm is coming, wow, boom,” anchors John Clark and Barbara Gibbs bantered, while first alert weather team member Kweilyn Murphy added, “I love La Farm.”
Such enthusiasm is typical for La Farm Bakery, which has had a popular following since its beginning days in Cary, in 1999, and which has gradually expanded across the Triangle to this eighth bakery. With this new location, customers have another reason to be excited: It’s also a pizzeria serving Neapolitan-style pizza.
“It was long overdue,” Vatinet says of the decision to add pizza to the menu. “We’ve been talking about this for a long time.”
Why pizza? Vatinet says this new addition is just a natural extension of what his team already does, all day long, making bread. “Pizza is bread,” he reminds me with a twinkle in his eye. “Pizza starts with fermentation, just like bread.”
For the bakery’s first decade, Vatinet and his wife and business partner Missy stuck to bread. In 2009, they made their first foray into sandwiches, offering menu items like the Croque Madame. Since then the team has added other cafe-style options like salads, quiche, and flatbread to the menu—expanding the offering but keeping bread as the main protagonist.
“Our progression for the past 25 years went as to what compliments the bread,” he says.
At the new location, customers can choose from several pizza options. I usually like to judge a new pizza spot by its Margherita ‘za—getting to a pizza’s true essentials, with no toppings to hide behind—but they were out. Instead, I opted for the prosciutto pizza, which has La Farm’s signature chewy crust and a base of crème fraîche and mozzarella and is topped with prosciutto, arugula, and a drizzle of olive oil.
It was divine. A perfect ratio of sauce and cheese to the salty prosciutto, with the right amount of floppiness at the base. There are a lot of pizza options in this neighborhood, but La Farm is set to give them all a run for their money.
Each pizza starts at $11.99— they’re personal-sized pizzas—with the option to add on a handful of toppings like French anchovies or grilled chicken.
The 3,200-square-foot Creekside Commons location will also launch a full bar program in the spring, with an emphasis on featuring local breweries and spirits-makers, and will stay open until 9 pm Monday-Saturday for dinner service.
“We’re excited to share the next generation of La Farm Bakery with this refreshed, modern look and feel, on-site bakery, full-service café and bar,” explains Omar Gaye, who joined La Farm Bakery as COO in 2023, and is leading the brand’s expansion. “We’re upfitting our flagship bakery at Preston Corners to reflect this, and all new locations will also offer this complete French bakery, restaurant, and bar experience.”
As for future endeavors and whether La Farm will continue to expand across the Triangle? Vatinet just smiles and reminds me of his motto: “One loaf at a time.”
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