Before Burger Stevens owner Don Salamone began layering beef patties with Tillamook cheese and fancy sauce, before he worked the line at glitzy Las Vegas kitchens like Joël Robuchon or Restaurant Guy Savoy, before he cooked 16-person dinners for British musician Robbie Williams as his private chef, Salamone would sit down to meals of Sunday sauce, meatballs, and vinegar-laden salads of romaine and chickpeas with his mother in Rochester, New York.

“I always used to make fun of my mom, ‘We’re making sauce? Just sauce?’” he says, with a chuckle. The dish, of course, is an Italian American tradition: a sugo, sometimes called Sunday gravy, often made with various cuts of meat like spare ribs and ground pork.