SAUCE, GRAVY, SUNDAY SAUCE, "RED SAUCE" or SUGO ? What is it. It can be a couple different things. It depends on who you are talking to, if they are Italian-American or not, where their family comes from in Italy, and what Italian Enclave in America they grew up in : New York City, Boston, New Jersey, Baltimore, Cleveland, Chicago, or wherever?
Some, when they say Sauce, Sugo, or Gravy, they can be talking about a Tomato Sauce that was cooked with or without meat in it. They can be talking about a Tomato Sauce that was cooked with Meat in it, and the Sauce is served, dressing Maccheroni, but with the Sauce removed, for the Meat ( or Meats) to be served later in the meal, or put aside, refrigerated and served at another time.
Usually, when someone says "Gravy" they are referring to a sauce made with Tomatoes that meats, such as Italian Sausages, Braciola, Pork Ribs, Meatballs, and or Pork or Beef Neck, maybe chicken parts, Beef Chuck, or veal, in which the sauce is cooked with any combination of some of these meats mentioned, and possibly other meats, such as Lamb or Beef Short Ribs, whatever?
There is no one right answer to what is Italian-American Gravy, "Sauce" Sunday Gravy, Sugo, or Sunday Sauce. Again, it just depends on who is talking and their family background and history. There is now one standard answer, "No Right or Wrong." The main and most important thing is that the dish taste good.
A circa mid-1940s photograph of Veniero’s. Pictured from left to right are Peter Veniero, the son of Veniero’s founder, Antonio Veniero; Frank Catinella, a cousin of Robert Zerilli’s father, Frank Zerilli, and a manager at the bakery; an unidentified employee; Frank Zerilli, then also a manager.Credit...Courtesy of Veniero’s
More than two million Italians arrived in New York between the late 1880s and the early 1910s, many coming through Ellis Island and most desperately poor. Large numbers settled in Harlem, the Bronx and Brooklyn; others headed to Lower Manhattan, in particular to Greenwich Village —along Sullivan and Bleecker Streets — and, most famously, to the area surrounding Mulberry Street that would become the Little Italy of the Lower East Side.
Antonio Veniero, born near Sorrento in 1870, arrived in New York when he was 15 and went to work in a candy factory. He bought the building on East 11th Street in 1894 and began producing his own handmade confectionery there; when customers asked for something to go with it, he began offering espresso and biscotti. It was backbreaking work: There was no electricity; ice came in hundred-pound blocks; deliveries were made on horse-pulled carts. Pastry was baked in a coal oven in the store’s backyard, which is now part of the cafe.
Zerilli’s father, Frank, began working at Veniero’s in the 1930s and bought the business in 1970. Zerilli did weekend shifts at the bakery in the late ’70s and came on full time in 1981. He opened the back-room cafe in 1994, the year of the store’s 100th anniversary. His father died one month later. Both Zerilli and Frankie went to college before returning to work at the store but Zerilli often says to his son, “Remember, Grandpa said, ‘The best college is right here.’” He shows me a favorite photo of his father with the other Frank, Sinatra that is, taken around 1980. Sinatra, looking amiable, his arm around Zerilli’s shoulders, wears a crucifix and is holding a cigarette and a large sesame seed biscuit in the same hand. “It’s called a regina,” says Angelo Santamaria, Veniero’s head pastry chef. “Sinatra liked it crunchy.”
"Frank & Frank"
SINATRA & ZERILLI
A photograph of Frank Sinatra and Frank Zerilli, circa 1979. Sinatra is holding a Regina Pastry that Veniero’s made specially for the singer, who liked them large with a crunchy exterior.Credit...
FRANK SINATRA'S FAVORITE COOKIES
BISCOTTI REGINELLE
aka REGINA COOKIES
The QUEEN'S COOKIES
Frank Sinatra had a standing order for these tasty Sicilian Cookies, that were
whipped from Veneer's to Frank's home in Palm Springs for years.
