Philip DeVencentis is a local reporter for . He also sells jars, individually or by the case, through his company’s website,. in Paterson at Whole Foods Market at 500 Chestnut Ridge Road in Woodcliff Lake and at Whole Foods Market at 560 Valley Road in Wayne. in Lincoln Park at A&C Pork Store at 446 Chamberlain Ave. “It was always being made.”Īiello’s sauce is sold at A&A Fine Foods at 191 Main St. “What’s special about ours is that it always held on,” Aiello said. And it is fun to imagine the precise moment when someone in the village of Serrata stumbled on the magic formula. It is easy for him to remember being a boy, he said, when under the protective eye of his grandmother, he would be called on to stir the sauce. “I hope to expand the business into something big someday.”Īs Aiello looks toward his future, he said he cannot help but think about the past. “I’m carrying on gradually,” Aiello said. There were nearly 2,000 products entered in 18 categories. In April, Aiello’s original sauce won an award from the San Francisco-based Good Food Foundation as part of its 13th annual blind tasting.
She said she gave away several jars, and wooden spoons, to her neighbors as gifts for Christmas. Word of the sauce has spread in Bennett’s coastal community. There’s no way that I could ever use another sauce. “It’s such a cut above everything else in quality and taste. She said she was raised in a Sicilian household in Elmwood Park and that Aiello’s sauce rivals her late mother’s. She even joked how her Irish husband has taken a strong liking to the authentic Italian blend. At least that is the story she is going with.)įamily always comes before pasta sauce, but as Bennett would attest, they are perfect together. (The true reason for their bimonthly visits back home is to see their extended family - it really has nothing to do with the sauce. She said they pick up a case of the sauce, which includes 12 jars, each time they visit this area. Phyllis Bennett said she and her husband, Robert Bennett, drive from Southport, North Carolina, where the couple is now retired. And it’s just as delicious.” Worth a special tripĪiello’s customers appreciate his attention to detail - so much so that they said they are willing to travel hundreds of miles to pick up a case or two, or three, of his sauce. It’s like those tomatoes, but it’s grown in this country. “If you can’t use a San Marzano tomato,” Aiello said, “this is the next best thing. It is the closest that he said he can get to a San Marzano tomato, a variety of plum tomato originating from the highly fertile volcanic soil in the Sarno River valley of southern Italy. He said he buys mega-sized tins, each weighing as much as 6½ pounds, from a restaurant supplier in South Hackensack. He said he will only buy premium tomatoes, grown and canned by Stanislaus Food Products of Modesto, California the Golden State is, by far, the leading producer of tomatoes in the nation. There is also a variety with roasted eggplant, and a fifth variety being planned with porcini mushrooms.Īiello does not harvest his own tomatoes, but he said he is very particular about where they come from. The original sauce has six ingredients: tomatoes, fresh basil, water, olive oil, sea salt and ground black pepper.Īiello said he uses that as the base for the other sauces, which include arrabbiata, with crushed red chili pepper, and marinara, with garlic, grated carrots and onions. “This isn’t something that I just whipped up one day. “I keep it as simple as possible, which is what my family always did,” said Aiello, 31, a 2009 graduate of Wayne Hills High School and an alumnus of the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu, a cooking academy headquartered in Paris. TOWNSHIP COUNCIL: Wayne residents in for highest tax hike since Great Recession of '08. The label wrapped around each 24-ounce jar of Aiello’s sauce bears her likeness and her name: Nonna Mariantonia.
when his great-grandmother, Mariantonia Gatto Aiello, emigrated from Serrata, a commune in the Calabria region of southern Italy, in August 1929, settling first with her husband in Newark and then in Nutley. His recipe is a family secret handed down for generations. What sets his sauce apart from the competition is not only the ingredients, he said, but the history. Only the choicest fruit - it is a fruit, right? - will plop into the commercial-grade pot that he uses to prepare four sauce varieties at a kitchen on Utter Avenue in Hawthorne. He makes his own pasta sauce from scratch before jarring it and selling it by the caseload to area markets and to friends across the country and throughout the world.
WAYNE - The fleshy scarlet red fruit that grows on a vine is, to practically everyone, nothing more than a tomato.īut to Tommaso Antonino Aiello, a township resident, it is a way of life.
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