Sausages and success

June Casagrande

Since Salvatore Sabatino Ognibene came up with a sausage recipe in

1863 combining fresh, lean pork with Italian goat cheese, only one

ingredient has been added to the Sabatino family’s recipe for success:

the annual Taste of Newport festival.

“It’s been one of the key ingredients of our success,” said Jimmy

Sabatino, whose father, Peter, has made sausage a Newport Beach

institution.

The three-day food festival, sponsored by the Newport Harbor Area

Chamber of Commerce, will end today at Fashion Island.

Peter Sabatino brought his grandfather’s sausage recipe to Southern

California 11 years ago, when he moved the family restaurant business

from Chicago.

He started with a tiny, four-table dining room and some hard-working

family members in the kitchen. Jimmy worked as a chef in the restaurant

-- named Sabatino’s -- for more than a decade. Uncle Vinny, who, like

Jimmy, grew up in the restaurant business, was also on hand to help out.

Sister Laura pitched in too.

Within a year, the Sabatinos were tearing down a wall to double the

capacity of their quaint, Italian-themed dining room on Shipyard Way.

And, in those first shaky months, it was the Taste of Newport that

gradually helped cinch their success.

It’s where everyone in Newport Beach comes to taste what the city has

to offer,” Jimmy said. “They taste our food once, and that’s all it takes

for people to want to become regulars at the restaurant.”

For 10 years, the family and their grandfather’s special sausage have

been fixtures at the festival. Located “right between the beer and the

band,” Sabatino’s two 8-foot mesquite barbecue grills spew an alluring

smoke as samples of the restaurant’s wares sizzle and spatter.

Contrary to popular perceptions about pork sausage, this stuff is

relatively healthy, said Jimmy. Its seven grams of fat are less than half

that of regular pork sausage.

The secret, the Sabatinos say, is no secret.

“My great-grandfather always said that you never cut quality no matter

what the cost,” Jimmy said.

Fresh, lean pork is the main ingredient -- neatly trimmed to reduce

fat while adding flavor. Goat’s milk cheese and Salvatore’s blend of

spices round out the recipe.

“We’ve been making this sausage for over 137 years, and we never knew

we were serving a healthy product,” Jimmy said. “Only in recent years,

when people started thinking about these things, did we realize how

healthy it is.”

Though the samples offered at the Taste of Newport festival are kept

to the basics -- mainly sausage sandwiches and Caesar salads -- the

restaurant leaves no culinary frontier unexplored.

At its soul is sausage: grilled sausage in hot or mild variety,

sausage-spiked pasta dishes, sausage pate, sausage gravy -- even sausage

eggs Benedict for Sunday brunch. But, in the tradition of Sicilian

restaurateurs, the Sabatinos see food as an art form that knows no

boundaries.

The guiding principles are quality, quantity and variety. Rack of

lamb, steak, pasta, poultry and specialties such as stuffed peppers round

out the menu. Breads and salads are in abundance. Frank Sinatra and

Italian ballads play softly against a backdrop of arched doorways and

walls covered with murals of Italian landscapes.

“You’ve got to stay true to tradition,” Jimmy said, adding that a few

less-traditional whimsies can be detected in the decor. For example, a

tiny Freddy Krueger is poised on a Venetian arch painted into the mural

in one dining room. In the farthest corner of the restaurant, owner

Peter’s face is subtly represented in a muted cameo -- allowing a sense

that the boss’ gaze extends throughout the restaurant.

“My father’s always looking at us,” Jimmy said.

Other touches throughout the restaurant drive home a sense of the

Italian, especially a framed, autographed photo of Frank Sinatra himself.

“This is our life,” said Vinny, Peter’s brother. “I grew up in the

kitchen of one of our family restaurants. It’s about food, but it’s

mainly about food prepared with love.”

Jimmy is heading up an effort to spread this sentiment far and wide.

For the last year, he has been concentrating on wholesaling the family’s

famous sausage. On Sept. 8, he appeared in full chef’s attire on the

television network QVC. In an eight-minute segment showing sizzling pans

of sausage, Sabatino’s took viewer orders for about 6,600 pounds of

sausage.

“We did $52,000 in business in just eight minutes,” Jimmy said.

As a result, there’s a good chance Sabatino’s sausage will hit the QVC

airwaves again in the near future.

Jimmy has also been stepping up wholesale sausage sales to

restaurants, especially through Las Vegas casinos. The Stratosphere and

Mandalay Bay are some of the Vegas institutions now serving Sabatino’s

sausage, Jimmy said.

But no matter how far away their sausage empire extends, the

Sabatino’s spirit will always be about home.

As Vinny puts it: “Newport Beach is Sabatino’s stomping ground.”

-- June Casagrande covers Newport Beach. She may be reached at (949)

574-4232 or by e-mail at o7 june.casagrande@latimes.comf7 .