Our story · Est. 2007
The nickname that became a Naples institution
Long before there was a storefront, there was a folding table at the Saturday farmers market — and a line that formed before the jars were even unpacked.
Ela Vivonetto grew up in the kitchen. She's a second-generation Vivonetto of Vivonetto's Restaurant in Naples, where the family recipes — the marinara, the meatballs, the slow Sunday sauces — were handed down the old way: by standing at the stove next to someone who loved you.
After years in catering, Ela began bottling those recipes and selling them at the local farmers market. Every Saturday, as she arrived with her crates, vendors and regulars would call out the same greeting: “Here comes the sauce lady!” They said it so often that when she outgrew the market booth and opened her own kitchen and storefront in North Naples, the name was already chosen for her.
Today, The Sauce Lady is part specialty kitchen, part Italian market, and part answer to the eternal question of what's for dinner. The refrigerated cases are stocked every morning with small-batch sauces, soups, fresh ravioli, baked lasagna, and fully cooked entrées that finish at home as if they never left the stove. The ovens turn out garlic knots with a local fan club, crusty loaves, Italian desserts — and now, hand-stretched pizza until 9 PM.
Ela still caters everything from a dinner for two to celebrations of a hundred or more, and she still sets aside a taste of each day's cooking, because the recipe isn't finished until it tastes like family.
Family recipes, handed down for generations. You can really taste the difference.