The Sauce Boss

10/10/2026

🗞️🇮🇹 **EXTRA! EXTRA! STOP THE PRESSES!**

In a stunning development, Zia Rosa has appointed herself Editor-in-Chief of *The Daily Meatball*, a publication with absolutely no journalistic credentials and an alarmingly strong opinion about carbohydrates.

With Alabama weather preparing to throw a full-blown tantrum, Zia Rosa has issued her official Sicilian Hurricane Survival Guide.

Meanwhile, The Sauce Boss is busy making sure nobody has to face questionable weather AND a questionable dinner.

🍝 Bertolone’s Take & Bake meals are the ONLY sensible part of this otherwise highly suspicious emergency preparedness plan.

📞 205-917-9593 📞 Call ahead and get dinner handled before Mother Nature starts showing off. And while we're having a little laugh here, please take the weather seriously, make your preparations, and look out for one another. ❤️

**The Daily Meatball** 📰 🇮🇹 🍝
Serving Slices, Sass & Sauce Since a really long time ago.

09/10/2026

We found this in the archives. Apparently, sometime around 1957, Bertolone’s purchased a billboard alongside I-65, autumn arrived in Alabama before Thanksgiving, and somebody abandoned a tire beneath it. We have questions.

Regardless...

Introducing the BERTOLONE’S THREE-PEAT. Order three pizzas for TAKEOUT ONLY and the lowest-priced pizza is 50% off.

🏈 ONE SATURDAY. TWO TEAMS. TWO GAMES. THREE PIZZAS.
** Offer valid September 12, 2026, only. Takeout orders only. Lowest-priced pizza receives 50% discount. Cannot be combined with other offers or discounts. **
____________________________

This Saturday, September 12, Alabama takes on Kentucky at 2:30 PM, Auburn meets Southern Miss at 6:45 PM, and Bertolone’s has decided that the only reasonable response to an entire day of Alabama football is an unreasonable amount of pizza.

Crimson? Come get pizza.
Orange and blue? Come get pizza.
Don’t care who wins and just want to eat cheese in peace? You are our people.

And before anybody starts anything in the comments... yes, we gave both teams equal billboard space. Yes, we measured. This entire promotion was created under absolutely no supervision of a lifelong San Francisco 49ers fan, which means Zia Rosa has approached the sacred Alabama / Auburn football divide with all the reverence and emotional investment you would expect from someone whose football loyalties are located approximately 2,326 miles west of here in her hometown of San Francisco.

She has been informed that SEC football is very important. Repeatedly. Sometimes loudly. Zia Rosa has also been advised that saying “It’s just SEC football” in Alabama may constitute grounds for immediate deportation back to San Francisco; therefore, she has agreed not to say it....out loud.
____________________________

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 • TAKEOUT ONLY
Buy 3 pizzas • Get the lowest-priced pizza 50% off

📍 Bertolone’s Classic Italian, Exit 231... which apparently has existed since 1957 because our advertising department (Zia Rosa) has never allowed historical accuracy to interfere with a good composition.

09/10/2026

CONFESSIONS OF A SAUCE BOSS

Don’t Drown the Virgin

Monday, 6:15 a.m.

I have coffee. I have a computer. I have approximately seven peaceful minutes before the restaurant finds me.

Then my phone lights up with a text from my Rosina.

“Do we use seed oil in our dipping oil?”

I type back:

“Yes, Rosina. We do.”

I press send.

The phone rings immediately.

Rosina.

Now, when Rosina calls immediately after a text, I know we’re about to take the scenic route. Rosina can be brilliant, irreverent, completely off-topic and alarmingly on-point, all in the same sentence, and somehow, by the end of it, I’m the one taking notes.

Apparently, while I was still trying to introduce caffeine into my bloodstream, Rosina had found a comment about us on Facebook.

She sent me the screenshot.

“The ‘olive oil’ that you serve on your tables is cut with cheaper seed oils. I can’t eat there knowing that.”

— W.

W., amico, listen. I have changed your name as an act of hospitality.

I will bring you extra-virgin olive oil.

Untouched.

Unseasoned.

Unbastardized.

Because good extra-virgin olive oil is made to be admired, not disguised.

I’m not going to take a beautiful oil, dump pesto, garlic, herbs and seasoning into it, and bury the very flavor that made it worth buying.

And I certainly won’t send that virgin to the table only to watch some of you people drown it in Parmigiano like your life depends on it.

Our complimentary bread oil is a seasoned dipping oil.

It has a job.

Extra-virgin olive oil has a different job.

It stands alone.

Naked.

Beautiful.

Peppery.

Unbothered.

So yes, if you want extra-virgin olive oil, ask me.

I have it.

Then you can dip your bread into it and appreciate it in all its virgin glory.

Although, after watching what some of you do to it, I’m not entirely convinced you know what to do with a virgin.

And get your filthy mind out of the gutter.

We’re talking about oil.

The Sauce Boss

09/07/2026

09/07/2026

CONFESSIONS OF A SAUCE BOSS

The Sauce Has a Good Side

I was staring at a four-ounce cup of pomodoro, trying to determine its best angle.

This is not a sentence my mother ever said.

She made sauce. She tasted it, adjusted it, and let it simmer until it became what it was supposed to be.

No one asked whether the ragù photographed better from above.

But I am finally updating our online-ordering platform, and the system wants pictures.

Apparently, the internet would like proof that we have sauce.

So there I was, the Sauce Boss, arranging containers of pomodoro, panna, pesto cream, rosé, and ragù as if they were waiting for school portraits.

The pomodoro was a natural.

The panna looked pale.

The ragù refused to smile.

The pesto cream, which is beautiful in person, photographed as if it needed medical attention.

I moved the light.

I changed the angle.

I wiped one microscopic drop from the rim of the container.

Then I stepped back and studied the lineup.

My mother judged sauce by aroma, texture, patience, and whether everyone at the table became quiet after the first bite.

The internet gets half a second and a phone screen.

Before we can feed you, we must first seduce your thumb.

You cannot smell the garlic through a screen. You cannot hear the sauce simmering. You cannot see me tasting it for the fifth time because the fourth answer was not final.

So the photograph has to do all the talking.

I turned the pomodoro slightly toward the light.

There it was.

Rich, red, glossy, and completely aware of its own importance.

My mother taught me how to make sauce.

America taught me it needs a headshot.

The Sauce Boss

08/21/2026

08/21/2026

CONFESSIONS OF A SAUCE BOSS

And Then There Were Twelve

There comes a point in every restaurateur’s life when she encounters the wildly, willfully, almost admirably optimistic party planner.

Yesterday, the phone rang.

“Hi, I’m calling to confirm my reservation for tomorrow at four.”

“Of course. How many are we expecting?”

“Fifty.”

Fifty.

“Can we sit in the private room?”

Absolutely.

It was four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. The private room was available. Fifty people? Come on down.

There was only one tiny problem.

I could not find this reservation anywhere.

Not under her name.

Not at four o’clock.

Not for fifty people.

Nothing.

Now, I’ve been in this business long enough to know there were two possibilities.

Either she never made the reservation.

Or somebody forgot to write it down.

And when you own the restaurant, you also know that “somebody” has an uncomfortable habit of occasionally being you.

So I did what any seasoned restaurateur with a healthy fear of her own fallibility would do.

I smiled into the telephone.

“Absolutely. We’ll be ready for you.”

Sunday morning, I came in and started mobilizing.

I found two of my lunch servers.

“Can you girls stay a couple of extra hours today? I have fifty coming in at four.”

They agreed.

I went to the kitchen.

“Fifty at four.”

There were questions.

Of course there were questions.

What are they ordering?

One check?

Separate checks?

What kind of party?

Excellent questions.

I knew none of the answers.

What I knew was:

Fifty.

Four o’clock.

Private room.

And at this point, I was far too committed to start asking questions that might reveal that, until approximately twenty-four hours earlier, I had no idea these people existed.

So we prepared.

Because in a restaurant, fifty is not optimism.

Fifty is staffing.

Four o’clock came.

It was raining.

My two servers were there.

The kitchen was ready.

The private room was ready.

We were ready.

The front door opened.

I looked toward the entrance.

My servers looked toward the entrance.

And we waited for the procession.

In they came.

All twelve of them.

Twelve.

Not forty-five.

Not thirty-eight.

Not even a respectable twenty-seven.

Twelve.

Apparently, the other thirty-eight had been more of a concept.

And this, amici miei, is something you eventually learn in the restaurant business:

Some people give you a guest count.

Some people give you their hopes and dreams.

Either way, you schedule the servers.

And then there were twelve.

— The Sauce Boss