Montone Sauce & Co.

The Montone family has been mopping up leftover sauce with their bread around dinner tables in New Jersey for over 100 years. Among the scores of immigrants from southern Europe making their way to America at the dawn of the twentieth century, were a few carrying the last names Montone, Olivieri, Romano, Mai, and Missaggia.  They were the families that would eventually come together to become the Montones. Those early days in the U.S. were rarely easy for these newcomers as their calloused hands quite literally built the towns in Bergen and Hudson counties that their families would call home. As the years went by these Italian immigrants lived American history as it happened – weathering the Great Depression and sending their sons off to fight in World War II, Vietnam, and Iraq. Times were not always easy – for the country, or for anyone who found themselves seated around the dinner table with these emotional, sharp tongued, and sometimes hot tempered Italian-Americans, but if one thing could keep the gondola floating it was food – particularly pasta, and the sauces that were slaved over every Sunday before family and friends filled the house with love, laughter, and a little bit…okay, a lot of shouting. Why such an honest description of the family that’s now trying to sell you on their sauce recipes? Because if you’re an Italian-American, particularly an Italian-American from Jersey, then our story is probably a pretty close reflection of your story, and to be anything less than completely authentic would do a disservice to our customers and to our forefathers who would eventually shut up for a few minutes once a bowl of rigatoni and a glass of red wine were placed in front of them.