Jon bon jovi said :- “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person: He believed in me.”
John Bongiovi, Sr. doesn’t miss a beat when asked what the secret of his family’s pasta sauce is.
“Put love into it,” the 74-year-old Bongiovi says.
During two sold-out seatings at JBJ Soul Kitchen on Monday night, Bongiovi gladly shared his family’s pasta sauces – the recipes for which originated in the Sicilian town of Sciacca and were passed down through three generations.
“In our house, dad made a pot of sauce on Sunday. This was never a quick sauce, it was an eight-hour process. Then throughout the week we would have the sauce – starting with pasta on Monday or Tuesday, seafood one day and chicken another, but it always tied back to the sauce,” said Matthew Bongiovi, one of John Bongiovi, Sr.’s three sons. “This sauce is truly what we grew up on, it is a staple of our family.”
Monday night’s event was an opportunity for Bongiovi to cook for his family again – including his oldest son, rock star Jon Bon Jovi – as well as approximately 60 other friends and community members.
It was the second such event Bongiovi has prepared meals for at the Monmouth Road restaurant, which is a non-profit community program run by the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation.
“Besides family events, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, I won’t do anything like this anywhere else,” Bongiovi said. “This is for charity.”
John Bongiovi, Sr. – father of rocker Jon Bon Jovi – showcased his brand of sauces while feeding about 60 people at JBJ Soul Kitchen in Red Bank on Monday night.
Soul Kitchen’s manager Ryan Timmons said all of the proceeds from the evening would go to helping feed more families at the restaurant, which he said is a community restaurant that provides nice meals to people regardless of income level.
The restaurant’s patrons are asked to give a suggested donation of at least $10, which Timmons said covers the immediate cost of their three-course meals. People unable to pay the $10 are simply asked to donate their time, which helps them earn meal vouchers.
“And while you’re here at Soul Kitchen, nobody knows who’s who. There’s no monetary exchanges, so everybody is equal. It doesn’t matter if you have $2 million in your pocket or two cents in your pocket,” Timmons said. “Everybody sits at the same tables, with the same menus and gets treated exactly the same. Our main tagline is ‘All are welcome at our table.’”
Bongiovi’s menu of seven entrees – ranging from traditional dishes like Chicken Parmigiana and Penne Vodka Primavera to Mussels Marinara and Baked Tilapia Putenesca – were pulled from his own recipes.
More importantly, each of the dishes featured one of the three “Bongiovi Brand” Pasta Sauces that Bongiovi and his sons Anthony and Matthew began selling a little more than a year ago.
Those sauces – marinara, garden style and arrabbiata – are now sold in ShopRites throughout Monmouth, Ocean, Middlesex, Somerset and Mercer Counties, as well as in Wegmans stores throughout New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Virginia.
“It was an ongoing thing on our family: ‘Hey dad, you’ve got to bottle this!’ And then a little over a year ago, my brother Anthony said ‘Dad, I really think we should do this,’” said Matthew Bongiovi, who is the vice president of the Bongiovi Brand pasta sauces. “But in our house, jarred sauce was a sin, it wasn’t anything in our vocabulary. So for us to do this, we wanted to truly produce what Dad served at home. If we could not do that, we would not do that. So when we say ‘from our table to yours,’ this is truly what we grew up on.”
To prepare for Monday night’s meals, John Bongiovi, Sr. started doing prep work on Saturday and then arrived at the restaurant with a pair of friends early Monday morning to finish food preparations.
“I’m surprised by all of this. I’m supposedly retired, but I haven’t had a day off yet,” joked Bongiovi, the sauce company’s president. “But it keeps me going, so I don’t have to be sitting around. I never though I’d be feeding the public, but I’m enjoying it.”
And Bongiovi said he is confident that if shoppers give his sauces a chance, they would enjoy them too.
“They’re gonna love it! If you taste it, you’ll like it,” he said. “And if you don’t like it? Hey, I can’t satisfy everybody, but I try.”
