The Story of Kissino Sauce

The recipe for kissino gourmet pasta and spaghetti sauces have been passed on from generation to generation in my family. It has spanned the globe from Palermo, Sicily to New Orleans and then to Los Angeles. I learned to make this sauce from my mother and grandmother while residing in an ethnic neighborhood in East Los Angeles called Lincoln Heights. In that neighborhood, cooking was an identity. Certain families were recognized for the various recipes and the foods they prepared. There was a great deal of pride and a lot of terrific food. My family was best known for the sauces. The current edition of this sauce has been refined over the years. My version is the sauce we currently produce.
All marinara sauces contain similar ingredients. What separates our sauce from the others is (1) the quality of the ingredients as we only order the best (2) the proportions in which these ingredients are infused into the sauce and (3) the method used to “build” the sauce. The methodology dictates that ingredient B is not added until ingredient A is at a certain temperature of consistency. By so doing, we insure the vegetables will maintain their integrity and the sauce will blossom into its fullest flavor.

I first sold this sauce commercially in a pizza restaurant I owned in Southern California. Rather then buy sauce from the purveyors; I produced the sauce used in all of our Italian dishes. After a time, my customers would not only come to buy pizza, but they would also inquire if they could buy some sauce. Often times they would bring their own containers. This became the impetus to produce this sauce commercially.

KISSINO sauce was test marketed for 14 months at various Farmers’ Markets in both Southern California (San Clemente) and Northern Nevada (Lake Tahoe). We wanted to see if customers would purchase the sauce and then return to purchase again. The success we achieved was exciting. Our sample to sell rate was almost 40%, which is exceptional.

We have been in many small stores for the last 8 years. In 2008, Raley’s Market allowed us to become part of their chain. We are now in 12 of their stores and hope to expand into all 75 of their branches. Since January of 2011 we have increased our store count by 250%. If you look at our location page, you will see we have 83 stores and are adding to this amount on a consistent basis. Whole Foods Market, Bristol Farms, Mother’s Market & Kitchen, Lunardi’s, Scolari’s as well as Raley’s are part of our family of stores.

We began with our original marinara and a spicy version (arrabbiatta) and now have 3 more flavors. In our “family of fine sauces”. In addition to the two products previously mentioned, we will have a marinara made with fresh mushrooms, a sauce called Puttanesca (marinara with capers and black olives) and a lite marinara which will have no tomato paste in the formula.

In a nutshell, KISSINO Sauce is best described by our slogan: ”Simple Ingredients, Simply Made, Simply Delicious”