Carmine’s bills itself as the “original NYC family style Italian restaurant.” I don’t know if that’s true, but who’s gonna argue? It’s an Upper Westside landmark that counts Tina Fey, John Mulaney, Tom Hanks, and Jon Hamm among its customers and fans. The upscale red sauce joint has expanded since its first location opened in 1990—they have locations in New Jersey, Las Vegas, the Bahamas, and Washington D.C.—and now you can buy four of their sauces in a jar at the grocery store: Carmine’s Marinara sauce, Vodka sauce, Tomato Basil sauce, and Fra Diavolo sauce.
These don’t seem to be widely available at grocery stores here in Southern California (at least not yet), but for fun I checked stores in zip codes in NYC and Chicago, and they’re around. Should you seek them out? Now, I’m not a Carmine’s expert, but I know good sauce. Here’s how these stacked up when I tried them on some freshly boiled spaghetti. (Rao’s spaghetti, in fact! Don’t tell Carmine!)
Listen, I almost never love a tomato basil sauce. Dried basil has a tendency to overpower everything you add it to, and jarred tomato basil sauce is no different. Now, I can’t say for sure that Carmine’s uses dried basil, but this sauce has that same flavor. All of Carmine’s sauces are very garlicky—they have fat slabs of garlic in the mix—and all of them are pretty loose (more on that later). All in all, it’s pretty inoffensive, but they make better sauces, for sure.
Carmine’s Fra Diavolo is made with a hint of clam juice and spicy red pepper flakes—doesn’t that sound good? I couldn’t really taste the clam juice, but there is a flavor in there I couldn’t quite put a finger on and that I didn’t love. Is it basil? Maybe an extreme amount of bay leaf? I liked the kick of heat, but other than that, this sauce didn’t really hit for me. And, again, it’s loose. Besides being a bit oily (which I actually quite like), most of Carmine’s sauces are a bit watery, too. This sauce doesn’t really cling to pasta the way I want it to.
Of all the red sauces, Carmine’s Marinara has the best cling. There’s some chunkiness that makes an impression when you eat it twirled up in a forkful of spaghetti. It’s still on the looser side, but it’s better than the Fra Diavolo or the Tomato Basil sauce. It tastes better, too. The roma tomatoes taste really nice and fresh, and the garlic is nice and bright. It’s oily like Rao’s marinara (which we love), but it doesn’t taste as salty as Rao’s. It’s not super acidic, either. If you’re one of the many people who complain that Rao’s is too salty, this is a nice option.
This is the best Carmine’s sauce, for sure. Like the marinara, it’s very fresh tasting, with big slices of garlic and nice, chunky tomatoes. Those savory stewed tomatoes taste great in the base, which has a little bit of nutty bite from the romano cheese in the mix. It’s still not a super clingy sauce, but it has a thick enough consistency that you can get a lot of chunks and flavor in a bite. Oh, it’s a little spicy too! Just a tiny bit of simmering heat from red pepper flakes—I bet some people wouldn’t even notice it, but it’s nice for me (I don’t have a terribly high heat tolerance).
Howdy! I’m Gwynedd, Sporked’s managing editor. I live in Los Angeles and have access to the best tacos the U.S. has to offer—but I’m a sucker for a crunchy Old El Paso taco night every now and then. I’ve been at Sporked since 2022 and I’m still searching frozen mozzarella sticks that can hold a candle to restaurant sticks.
Why you should trust me: I’ve been a journalist for 20 years (yikes), a consumer of food for 40-plus years, and I’m truly hard pressed to think of foods I don’t like (or that I can’t tolerate at the very least). Oh and one time I cooked my way through Guy Fieri’s cookbook and wrote about the journey through Flavortown.
What I buy every week: Trader Joe’s Original Savory Thins. Fat free plain yogurt (usually Fage or Nancy’s). Honeycrisp apples. Sweet cream coffee creamer for my at-home Americanos. A frozen cauliflower crust pizza and some jarred mushrooms to top it with. Old El Paso Stand ‘N Stuff taco shells and Gardein Ground Be’f, even though I think “be’f” is a nightmarish contraction.
Favorite ranking: Stouffer’s frozen dinners. I don’t own a microwave (I get my cancers the old fashioned way!), so I love taste testing things that I don’t really buy to eat at home.
Least favorite ranking: Soy sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love soy sauce—but consuming that much sodium in one sitting is probably illegal in some countries. Our frozen enchilada taste test was a close second; the smell of microwaved corn tortillas still haunts me.
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!
Gwynedd Stuart
Justine Sterling
Jordan Myrick
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!