By Dino Figaretti
Food and family went hand in hand growing up as a Figaretti. My grandparents, Giuseppe and Anna, came to the U.S. from Sicily and lived in Clarksburg where my grandfather was a coal miner. In 1944, my grandmother started making spaghetti sauce for her neighbors. People in Elm Grove liked the sauce so much, they started buying it. She worked out of a little garage next to her home. The sauce became so popular that each of her five sons—Chi Chi, Jack, Mike, Tony and Joe—began helping her with the production and delivery to local grocery stores. The popularity of the sauce led to the idea of a restaurant, which opened in 1949 in Wheeling, WV.
My brother, Tony, is part of the family business as well. He has continued the family tradition of manufacturing the family sauce. Figaretti’s sauce is more popular today than it was in the 1940s. Jars of our sauce have found their way onto the shelves of produce, gourmet and specialty shops in West Virginia and Ohio. And, just like the early days, he still sells my grandmother’s sauce to all of the local grocery stores. Recently, Figaretti’s sauce was picked up by Kroger nationwide.
Figaretti’s is located at 1035 Mt. DeChantal Road in Wheeling, WV, and is open Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. and Sunday, 4 to 9 p.m.
