He’s making gravy.
Five years ago, PJ Monte started bottling, hand-labeling and selling his family’s red sauce around local restaurants and specialty stores, earning him the moniker “Sauce Boss.”
Now, he’s really cooking. Monte’s Fine Foods Family Recipe Tomato Sauce is available in hundreds of retailers nationwide, and Monte is promoting himself by cruising around the city in a chauffeured, 90s-era white stretch limousine and selling his famous sauce from the trunk.
“I was always a hustler,” Monte told The Post, from the blue velvet back seat of the vintage limo, which he purchased last month for $15,000 in New Jersey and outfitted with a red neon sign reading “Monte’s.”
“My family’s been making sauce the same way for 120 years. I started posting cooking and sauce videos and people were responding to me as Sauce Boss and I ran with it,” he added.
When he’s not slinging sauce to wholesale clients, the hot wheels are parked outside of his Mulberry Street coffee and retail shop, Caffe Monte, where he’ll be serving his sauce with homemade pasta and fresh mozzarella during the Feast of San Gennaro, beginning September, 19.
Monte, is a fourth generation Italian-American, and his family has a history richer than bolognese.
His great grandparents, Angelo and Filomena Montemarano, opened Monte’s Venetian Room in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, in 1945, serving up dishes such as eggplant parmigiana to Rat Pack icons like Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and James Cagney.
Then, in 1956, Monte’s grandfather Angelo and his brother, Nick Montemarano, took their hospitality empire out East. They bought Gurney’s Inn, named for its original owners, for $200,000.
“It wasn’t Italian, just rustic Montauk, old school seafood focus, which we carried on with our Italian-American flair,” Monte said, adding, “I was like the Eloise of Gurney’s [growing up] but they put my a– to work!”
He had jobs at various spots around the then sleepy fishing town.
“I got a job at John’s Drive-In cooking fries, I worked as a Cabana boy at Gurney’s, bellhop, you name it,” he said.
His family sold Gurney’s more than a decade ago, and opened Monte’s Local Kitchen and Tap Room in the Hudson Valley town of Amenia in 2006. There, Monte began experimenting with making sauce during the pandemic.
“I started recreating the Sunday gravy my family used to make,” he told The Post. “I learned the recipe from my Uncle Chipper [Angelo Monte]. I would work until about 11 p.m., sautéing olive oil, fresh garlic, shallots and onions.”
His first account was Dipaolo’s in Little Italy. It was a big moment for him and his gravy.
“I walked in there, pulled a ticket and waited a half hour holding six jars of sauce. I was like, ‘Hey, Mr. DiPalo — Sal — I started jarring up my family’s sauce, I would love for you to try it,” Monte recalled. “He picked it up, looked at it and goes, ‘for you?’ I’ll take a case. I felt like I hit a grand slam at my first at bat in the big leagues. $54 bucks — it was like $5 million to me.”
During the pandemic, Monte expanded and launched an e-commerce business.
When it got his relatives’ stamp of approval, he decided to go big – finding a farm out in California to grow the tomatoes to produce the family recipe.
Today, the sauce, which is cooked in small batches to preserve freshness, is sold in numerous Whole Foods, Sprouts, Targets, Erewhon, ShopRite and smaller businesses such as Uncle Giuseppe’s retailers around the Tri-State area.
In 2024, Monte’s Original Family Recipe Tomato Sauce ranked No. 1 in the Best Overall category on Food and Wine Magazine’s list of the 15 best jarred tomato sauces, beating out 100 competitors, including Rao’s and Carmine’s.
“It’s smooth (but not too smooth), well-seasoned, complex, and yet somehow still nostalgic,” the food magazine said, calling it “the best jarred tomato sauce we’ve ever tasted.”
Monte is thrilled with his success, but the entrepreneur isn’t resting on his laurels.
“It’s harvest season,” he said. “Every second counts!”
Read the full article here
