![]() ![]() If you’re looking for quality sauces, their prize-winning recipes can be bought in jars along with seven other varieties. And the bed of cheeses is long enough for even the tallest of cheese-eaters to lie down and sleep easy. Murray’s family-farmed, “certified humane” chicken comes especially recommended. You can find dewdrops on the vegetables and quality in the deli. The market’s actual groceries are quite solid as well. ![]() “You mix and match and you make your recipe.” “-unless there’s too much garlic.” Many of the recipes at Nica’s have been in the family for generations, but tweaking is allowed, and so is inventing. “In forty years,” says Sabino, “I have never had a dish by her hand that I’ve disliked-” He stops to think. While the whole Sabino family can cook, Giovanna commands the kitchen. In the Connecticut Specialty Food Association’s 2008 competition, Nica’s Organic Garlic & Basil Sauce and Organic Marinara Sauce swept 1st and 2nd place, respectively, in the “Outstanding Organic” category, and their Vodka Pasta Sauce snagged 3rd for “Outstanding Pasta Sauce.” And out of the blue, Nica’s has been ranked by Connecticut Magazine as one of the top five “Unusual Places” to get pizza in Connecticut. “Best of” awards from the New Haven Advocate hang on the wall as you walk in. During meal times on nice days, the front patio teems with diners and loungers at latticed metal tables, shaded by rows of white and red umbrellas. They opened Nica’s Market in 2002, growing it into a popular spot to pick up groceries and a meal along East Rock’s stretch of Orange Street. Yet again, Sabino started over, but this time with the help of his wife, Giovanna, and his two kids, Rosanna and Antonio. “We don’t want to talk about it,” says Sabino. Then came a harsh split between the partners, for mysterious reasons. In 1989, the family returned to New Haven where, with partner Romeo Simeone, Sabino opened his second market: Romeo & Giuseppe’s Gourmet Shop. ![]() Yet he realized there were too few opportunities for his children in the homeland, where he remembers seeing young people with college degrees working as street-sweeps. Soon after returning to Italy, he opened his first grocery market. It was a young age to retire, and for Sabino, it quickly proved too young. Together they had children Antonio and Rosanna and then, at the age of 33, he retired from his factory job in New Haven, returning to Italy to raise his children in the Italian way. “The only one above me was the owner,” he remembers proudly.Īt 24, he met his wife, Giovanna, while vacationing in Italy. He left the soda plant and by the age of 20 became the general manager of a local steel factory. Just like with his brother-in-law’s tractor, Sabino watched carefully, learned quickly and moved up the ranks. By the third week at the factory, he was running the three-man conveyor belt on his own. Unable to speak a word of English, he worked a short stint at a handbag factory, then took a job along the conveyor belt of the Cott soda plant, where Sabino says his drive to succeed quickly distinguished him. With money he’d saved driving the tractor and picking fruit as a day laborer, Sabino paid for his own ticket and left for America. By then too old to go herself, she transferred it to her daughter, so that she and her adolescent sons could go instead. Four years before he was born, Sabino’s grandmother began putting her name in the U.S. Then his life took an unexpected turn, though it’d been long in the making. He was 11 at the time, and for the next five seasons, he drove that tractor. “Okay,” said his brother-in-law after a single run, “now do it again.” Before long, Sabino had tilled the entire plot of land. After memorizing the workings of the machine, Sabino begged for a go at the controls, and his wish was granted. A s a boy, Giuseppe Sabino watched his father take a pickaxe into the fields of Caserta, Italy, and upturn acres of cracked Italian soil so they’d be ready for the rain. Meantime, Sabino would jump on the back of his brother-in-law’s tractor and watch him operate the pedals and levers.
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