As the only one of four brothers who was interested in cooking, the first job Joe was trusted with in the kitchen as a boy was dish washer. “You can learn a lot about food by cleaning up,” he laughs. “I’d run my finger around the inside of the pot. Of course no recipes were written down. I had to learn by observation, memorizing ingredients and tasting.”

For health reasons, Joe was looking for ways to take the fat out of his diet, but add in flavor. “I needed a substitute for the sausages and cheeses that are staples in Italian cooking. So I began to experiment with fresh peppers.”

David chimes in at this point, “I like spicy food, but I had never found a spicy red sauce that I liked. They’re usually made with crushed red pepper, agitates a burn in the back of my mouth, which I don’t enjoy. Joe’s sauces with the fresh peppers have a very pleasant warm mouth feel. I was bugging him to make more of it because I felt bad that he was making it but not getting any for his own use.”

“I started out as a customer,” David says. “To have a sauce that tastes to fresh right off the shelf is remarkable. The only thing better is if you’re Italian and have an Italian mom!”

The problem that Joe had when he first started making his sauces was that they were so popular with family and friends, that he often didn’t end up with any for himself. So David suggested that they launch Spicy Gravy as a company and make the sauces in larger quantities. “We started our company so that we could make it in large enough quantities so that when others had all they wanted, they were some left for me,” Joe says with a smile.

When asked what differentiates Spicy Gravy from other sauces, the partners agree that it’s primarily two things:
Just-made-it flavor. They are made quickly with a short cooking process to preserve the fresh taste. And they’re all natural, with no preservatives.
Fresh red peppers (instead of crushed dried) give the sauces a pleasing spiciness and extraordinary flavor.

Joe and David are committed to the same freshness that has always characterized Joe’s sauces.