Most nights, those boys would beg to go to work with their mom and dad, especially on the weekends after hearing all the stories they’d tell the next morning over coffee.
Maybe they’d hear about some city bigwig raving about the lasagna, or about the wife who tossed her third martini straight in her husband’s face. The Figarettis had welcomed any and all to their Elm Grove eatery since 1948, and the menu featured a “something for everyone” feel thanks to all those family recipes.
The boys could almost hear the clinks and clanks of wine glasses and dinner plates under the buzz of chatter coming from the busy dining room, and they knew their father always circled the tables playing host and greeting the night’s crowd. They knew it was their future; their destiny; and they wanted tomorrow, today.
“I would always tell my dad, ‘Come on, let me go down and work. Let me go down and work’. I want to work,” Tony Jr. recalled. “’Too young, too young,’ he’d say all the time, but I wanted to be part of it, so I never really left him alone about it. My uncles were in it, my mom … I wanted to be part of it like all of them. I remember being so mad when they’d leave.
“When me and Dino were kids, I don’t think either one of us realized what mom and dad were building, and most of the time they told us we’d get our chance one day,” he said. “It always sounded like the best place on Earth, and I just wanted to go. I wanted to get started.”
And he did. Tony Jr., almost five years older than Dino, was summoned first.
“One night – and it was New Year’s Eve – and one of the dishwashers didn’t show up to work, so that was my chance when he called home and said, ‘I’m coming to get you.’ And that was that. I think I was 12 or 13 then, and I was back there unloading those hot dishes. My grandfather gave me a $20 bill for helping, and that was huge for me. That was my start.
“We knew our parents were working their asses off, and if they needed a dishwasher, they called us into action because we were teenagers back then,” Tony Jr. recalled. “It was the family business. To us, it’s what Figarettis did, and we were Figarettis. We wanted to be part of it then, and here we are today.”
Tony Jr. represents the third generation of the family in charge of making “Figaretti’s Awarding Winning Spaghetti Sauce”, a recipe that’s been hidden away for 78 years, and Dino owns and operates the restaurant, an eatery more popular than ever and a 2026 James Beard America’s Classics Winner.
The restaurant is quaint and crowded seven days a week, and the pasta sauce is now sold in as many as 500 stores across 11 states up and down the East Coast.
“We’re brothers, so we’re on each other all of the time, but that’s all it is,” Dino said with a laugh. “I tell Tony all the time to quit charging me so much for the family’s sauce.
“All kidding aside, we do well together and thank God he does what he does because I don’t think we could do it here. We’re pretty limited on space here,” he said. “And I wouldn’t want to make the sauce every day because that’s a whole different part of the business.”
Seems they’re perfectly matched.
“And I wouldn’t want to operate the restaurant every day, so it’s good that Dino loves it,” Tony Jr. insisted. “Running a restaurant is a different lifestyle completely, and he’s great at it. He’s the reason why Figaretti’s received the James Beard Award because the atmosphere and the food can’t be beat.
“We both do what we have to do to make it all work, and to keep our family tradition going,” he said. “We’re doing what Figarettis have always done.”
Cozy & Crowded
It was Anna Figaretti who started it all.
The Sicilian immigrant was married to Guiseppe, a coal miner in Clarksburg, and the couple raised five sons. By 1944, Jack, Tony, Mike, Frank, and Joseph started selling her secret-recipe sauce, and just four years later, the sons took the sauce and their mother’s recipes and opened the original Figaretti’s Restaurant in Wheeling in 1948. Anna’s last surviving son, Joseph, sold the business to his nephew, Tony Sr., in 1978.
After the decision was made in the early 1990s to close the Elm Grove eatery, it took more than a few years for their father to finalize the plans to open its current location in 1999 in the Friendly City’s Clator neighborhood. By then, though, the Figaretti boys were committed to their careers – Tony Jr. was in the sauce business and Dino moved to Morgantown and went into sales.
“By that time, me and (wife) Kathy had our two kids, so I was afraid to get back into the restaurant business because I knew about the time it takes,” Tony Jr. said. “There’s only one way to run a restaurant, and it doesn’t include cutting corners. That’s how you close.”
But Dino and his wife, Michelle, made the move.
“I remember telling my dad I would help him, but that I didn’t want to move back to Wheeling. So, in the beginning, I drove back and forth between here and Morgantown for a couple of years, and I was a little more involved with the books so I had more understanding of the bills,” Dino remembered. “Me and my wife made a lot of sacrifices, but after a couple of years, I couldn’t take the driving anymore, so my father and I worked on a deal that let me come in full-time, buy the place, and run it.
“We eventually worked it out, and me and my family have been here ever since. Believe it or not, that was back more than 25 years ago, and here we are still doing it.”
And doing it as well as it can be done, so says the James Beard Foundation, an organization that honors restaurateurs with the “Academy Awards” of the food world.
“We are what we are, and that’s a classic Italian restaurant. That’s what our James Beard Award is centered around, and we’re very proud of that designation,” Dino said. “We’ve achieved the longevity, and this place has a lot of charm that people really enjoy. Tony and his work, of course, are big parts of what we do here, too, because our family’s sauce started this tradition.
“I can remember when we first got started here when we would do $1,000 a day and it was like, man, that was a good night. That was a really good night. Now? Well, now we’re doing almost $2.5 million a year at this little joint,” he reported. “When most people walk into this restaurant, one of the first things they see is the photo of the five brothers, and that’s because they’ve always owned this. Those brothers will always be a big part of this place.
“That’s why I look at that image a lot,” he said with a broad smile. “They did what we do here now, and our family has been serving the people of this valley for 78 years. I’m proud of that fact.”
The Sauce Factory
There’s water and tomato paste and a mysterious mixture of onions and peppers, salt and margarine, and sugar and secret spices, and every half-cup serving offers 50 calories and is all natural and gluten-free.
And it’s handmade and homemade most weekdays of every week.
At 5 a.m., Tony Jr. joins four co-workers to produce 180 gallons of pasta sauce per day with 15-20 gallons made for the restaurant and the rest are packaged for regional and national distribution.
“Did ya know he fills the jars by hand?” Dino asked. “Every single one of them, Tony fills by hand.”
“Well, I have a pitcher that fills three jars at a time,” big brother said in his attempted defense. “I can make every jar perfect that way. I fill a jar and slide it down, and that’s where I have a gentleman who caps each jar by hand.”
“Yeah,” Dino quipped. “He’s crazy.”
Tony Jr. has been in charge of Figaretti Manufacturing & Distribution Inc. since 1992, and the sauce factory is located along Peters Run Road. The facility was rehabilitated following last June’s fatal flash flooding in Ohio County, but the tradition continued despite the adversity.
“I chose to stay in the spaghetti sauce business because I’ve loved it since I used to help my uncles,” Tony said. “We kept making the sauce even after the Elm Grove restaurant closed because the sauce was like a business within a business. My dad was making the sauce for a while at the Catholic Charities kitchen for a while, but then I took over.
“It was Giuseppe and Anna who came up with the recipe, and it’s not been changed. Nothing has been added or taken away. My Grandma Anna made it, and then it was Uncle Joe who made it next. Now, it’s me, and it’s been me for a lot of years and I go about it the same way my grandma and uncle did.
“It’s our family sauce, and I’m proud of it.”
But what makes such a fan favorite? C’mon, Tony, what’s the secret to the sauce?
“Well, it all starts with water and tomato paste,” he said with a sideways grin. “And from there, we add a whole lot of love, and viola!
“That’s all I’m going to say. That’s all I ever say. I mean, do you know how many times I’ve been asked that question? Who thinks I’m actually going to tell them?”
Chi Mangia Bene, Vive Bene!!
The restaurant’s “Hall of Fame” James Beard status isn’t by accident.
The artwork and décor create a classy vibe, there’s a bunch of buy-in from the front of the house and server staff, and the cooks in the kitchen are equipped with a recipe bible that’s proven successful for decades.
And “Fig’s” is a cool place to be seen, too.
“But hey, it’s been a struggle sometimes,” Dino explained. “We’ve had good years, we’ve had great years, and we’ve had years that really have made us think about what we’re doing here. Overall, though, I think we’ve done great, but it’s never been easy.
“In all honesty, and Tony and I talk about this a lot, I think my brother and I have built our own destiny here. We owe a lot to our grandparents and to the brothers, and to my mom and dad. We owe a lot to them, but we’ve built this our way.”
And those Figaretti boys are far from finished.
“Ya know, even when me and Dino were both working at the restaurant in Elm Grove, I would go in early in the morning and work into the afternoon, and then Dino would come in at 4 p.m. and work all night long,” Tony Jr. said. “It’s almost always been me in the back of the house, and him in the front of the house from the very beginning because that’s how we like it. It works that way.
“The restaurant just got the James Beard (Award), and now we’re looking to expand access to the sauce,” big brother added. “Our parents are thrilled to see how well we’re doing with it all. They’re thrilled. They gave us an opportunity and we’re taking off with it, I believe. We gotta make the family proud.”
