The Star Ledger: Meet Mancini, Maestro of Meatballs

 

Meet Mancini, Maestro of Meatballs

By Peter Genovese/The Star-Ledger
Published: Monday, February 21, 2011, 5:45 PM

The lowly meatball is back with a vengeance, and a mild-mannered guy from South Orange is making millions — of meatballs, anyway — delivering this most basic of comfort foods to the supermarket shelves and dining room tables of America.

“You pick up meatballs at the supermarket, some of them have a lot of fillers and preservatives,” says Daniel Mancini, sitting at a table inside Eden Marketplace in South Orange. “There are 25 different ingredients, and a lot of them you can’t pronounce.’’

There are just eight ingredients in MamaMancini’s meatballs, named after Mancini’s grandmother and available in an estimated 4,000 stores around the country.

A year ago, Mancini, a former garment-industry midmanagement type, was making 50,000 meatballs a month. Last month, he made 300,000 meatballs. By midyear, he expects to be making 700,000 a month.

That’s a lot of meatballs.

“Meatballs are one of the hot new food trends,” Mancini says.

Trends in the food business last about as long as cooks in Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen; in the past few years, it’s been high-end burgers, then gourmet pizza, then cupcakes, all seemingly poised to take over the world.

But lately there’s been beaucoup buzz about the humble little meatball. The annual Meatball Madness contest at the New York Wine & Food Festival pits 25 of the city’s top chefs in a meatball showdown. The Meatball Shop, the latest hipster joint on the Lower East Side, offers “Naked Balls” (four meatballs with your choice of sauce), sliders (one meatball on a bun) and heroes (three meatballs in a baguette), among other items.

And a guy who once worked at Abraham & Straus, Gimbels and Alexander’s is sitting atop a meatball mountain, one that seems to grow every day.

“I always say my meatballs are second-best,” Mancini, 52, said. “I don’t want to be yours, or your grandmother’s.”

No one knows who made the first meatball — there were recipes for stuffed meat patties in ancient Rome — but meatballs have been a fixture in kitchens since the first Italian grandmother took control of cooking duties.

“Do not think for a moment that I would be so pretentious as to tell you how to make meatballs,” Pellegrino Artusi, author of a famous 1891 Italian cookbook, once said. “This is a dish that everyone knows how to make, including absolute donkeys.”

Mancini learned how to make meatballs from his grandmother, who lived with Mancini’s parents and his two brothers and sister in a three-story home in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Grandma Anna Mancini, who came to this country in 1921, ruled over the kitchen.

“She was always happy, never stern,” Mancini recalled. “She had the toughest job — cooking for everyone.”

Grandma taught him how to make the meatballs, and would send him on errands: to the pork store, to the pasta store, to the bakery.

“I really concentrated on what she was doing when she was cooking,” he said. “I knew her meatballs and sauce.”

Anna Mancini died in 1977. When it came time for Mancini to switch career gears in a garment-industry downturn, meatballs seemed a logical choice as any.

He started selling his meatballs, based on his grandmother’s recipe, at Eden Marketplace, a gourmet specialty food store in South Orange. He partnered with neighbors Carl Wolf and Matt Brown, who are now CEO and president, respectively, of MamaMancini’s LLC.

Mancini’s breakthrough meatball moment came in April 2009, when he appeared on “The Martha Stewart Show.” “I thought I would be the guy at the end (of the show),” he said. “I was the first guy and I was on a half hour.”

Sales jumped, pending deals suddenly were consummated, and the meatball man was on his way. The meatballs, available in beef and turkey versions, are made in an East Rutherford plant, and are packaged with a Sunday sauce. The beef meatballs are made with breadcrumbs, Locatelli romano cheese, whole eggs, onion, parsley, salt and pepper, while the Sunday sauce is made with Italian plum tomatoes, onion, olive oil, garlic, bay leaves, salt and pepper.

MamaMancini’s meatballs can now be found in 4,000 stores nationwide, including Garden of Eden Gourmet stores, Whole Foods, ShopRite, Waldbaum’s, Publix and others. Mancini even has his own hot bar at the Eden Marketplace, with the two kinds of meatballs, plus pasta, vegetable and other dishes.

The Sunday sauce and a marinara sauce will soon be available in bottles on store shelves. A spicy meatball is on the horizon. Life is good for the meatball man.

Food trends may come and go, but Mancini believes he’s more than a flash in the pan.

“I see this going on forever,” he said confidently.