Grandson Makes It Public
By Caitlin McNamara
BAY RIDGE — Daniel Mancini has made at least one man cry with his grandmother’s meatball and tomato sauce recipe.
The man was nearly 80 and hadn’t eaten a meatball since his Italian mother passed away. Although he first said no, he was persuaded by Mancini to try one during a supermarket tasting demonstration, after they discovered that Mancini’s grandmother and the man’s mother were both originally from Bari, Italy.
The man cried, saying, “I’m tasting my mother’s meatball right now.”
Mancini has seen many versions of this reaction to his Mama Mancini’s Meatballs and Sunday Sauce since going commercial with the recipe last year. Some people tell him that they wish they had kept their own grandmother’s recipes. Others say the food tastes like home.
It has reinforced his belief that he did the right thing by leaving a 25-year garment-industry career to concentrate on making the dish available for sale.
“A meatball is a meatball, but when you talk to people, a meatball is a big deal,” says Mancini.
The traditional family dinner is something Mancini enjoyed growing up in Bay Ridge in the 1960s. Mancini’s parents and four children moved in with their grandmother, Anna Mancini, after her husband passed away. She had long before left Italy, in 1921, to pursue a better life in America.
“Every Sunday we would gather together for Sunday dinner,” he says. “When I was 15 I asked her to teach me her recipes. I really concentrated. I knew one day she would pass away and her recipes would go with her.”
It was in 2007, at the suggestion of a colleague, that Mancini was inspired to share the meatball recipe with the owners of a new gourmet market opening in South Orange, N.J., where he now lives. The tasting was a success, and the owners of the store told Mancini that they would sell his meatballs, but only if he could find a way to produce them in large enough quantities for all of their markets.
Within a month, Mancini partnered with a New Jersey-based specialty food manufacturer to produce his grandmother’s meatball and tomato sauce recipe, following her own techniques as closely as possible.
He says his grandmother believed that the best meatballs, in addition to containing the right blend of herbs and spices, were those slowly cooked for several hours in the sauce.
Mancini’s break came in April when Martha Stewart invited him on her show. He calls it one of his proudest moments. He discussed with her his childhood memories of growing up in Bay Ridge and his love and admiration for his grandmother.
“Martha was great to me. I loved it. I told her about another recipe for onion pie, and she said, ‘I gotta have you back on for that.’”
Whenever he and his wife Sherry entertain at home, Mancini can be found in the kitchen, cooking for his guests.
“Whenever I cook her recipes for friends and family, I am always reminded of the ‘scented memories’ that I have from my childhood,” he says. “I wanted to share mine with people who love good food, and who want to bring their family together with a great dinner, but who don’t have the time to cook.”
Mancini recently returned to Bay Ridge for the first time in a long time and spent time near his family home on Eighth Avenue. He was saddened to learn that Lento’s, a favorite haunt in his teens, had closed. His remaining family has since moved away.
He says of his grandmother, “I think she would be so happy [that her dish has been shared] because — I know this now, but I didn’t then — but it wasn’t all about the food. She knew that by cooking like this, she was keeping the family together.”
Mama Mancini’s meatballs are carried by retailers including Gourmet Garage, Garden of Eden, Pathmark, Super Fresh and in the Neiman Marcus and Figis catalogs. The northeast region of Whole Foods will stock the product within a few weeks.
“People keep coming up to me and telling me stories. I’m thinking of writing a book, maybe a tribute to grandmothers,” he says. “It’s been really exciting.”
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