Andrea Ceriello, owner of Ceriello Fine Foods, dies at 69

Andrea Ceriello, founder of Ceriello Fine Foods in Williston Park, died Thursday at his home in Dix Hills. He was 69 and the cause was lymphoma, said his daughter, Tina Ceriello.

Andrea Ceriello, better known as Andy, operated the Williston Park store, better known as Ceriello’s, from 1982 until his death. Over the years there have been nine Ceriello’s, including three on Long Island, two in New York City and two in Baltimore.

Ceriello was born in Sant’Anastasia, a town near Naples, Italy, in 1953 to Pasquale and Concetta (DeFalco) Ceriello and moved to Brooklyn in 1970. Shortly thereafter he took a job at the original A.S. Pork Store in Brooklyn. In 1980, he opened an A.S. in Williston Park and, two years later, he bought out his partner, the chain’s founder, Anthony Scicchitano, and renamed the store after himself. Ceriello satellites subsequently opened in Merrick, Wantagh and Wainscott. In 1998, he opened a location in ABC Carpet & Home; in 1999, at the food hall at Grand Central Terminal. The market crash in 2008 led to the closure of most of the satellites. Now only the original store and one in Grand Central remain, along with a mail-order website.

In 2017, Ceriello took over an unused space next to his original store to open 541 Burger Club, which during its two-year tenure, served one of the very best burgers on Long Island.

Even more than its growing footprint, the store distinguished itself by the quality of its products. It was one of the first stores on the Island to stock bronze-die pasta from Italy (1992) and Serrano ham from Spain (1999). Ceriello’s was the rare Italian deli on Long Island that did not use Boar’s Head products; roasts were cooked in the store’s own kitchen; ham, bologna and liverwurst were produced to its own specifications.

In 1990, Ceriello and his wife, Nancy Manfredi, started a line of pasta sauces that they made and packaged at the store. They tested a few shortcuts — using an electric agitator to stir it while it cooked, mechanically pumping it into jars — but, ultimately, rejected them. “It changes the consistency of the sauce,” Ceriello told Newsday. “It didn’t taste homemade.”

His professional heart belonged to pork. He lamented the quality of most American pork saying, “in Italy, the pigs are bigger, with more fat and more flavor,” and he tried to bring in as much fresh “heritage breed” pork as he could. So serious was he about pork sausage that, in 2003, he and a partner bought Licini Bros., a traditional, family-owned salsicceria (sausage factory) in Union City, New Jersey, where sausages are made using whole muscles — shoulders, bellies — and not scraps. "Look at the sausage in cross section," he instructed a Newsday reporter, "you don't want an even color. With the whole muscles you get the clean pink-and-white pattern of a terrazzo floor.”

Ceriello’s pasta sauces and Licini sausages, pancetta and guanciale are sold nationwide.

His daughter Tina has worked in the Williston Park store for 20 years and intends to carry on her father’s legacy. “He always said, ‘quality is everything,’” she recalled. “During his last few days when I asked him what am I going to do, he said, ‘Keep the quality up, and don’t be afraid to raise the prices.’”

In addition to Tina of Forest Hills, Ceriello is survived by another daughter, Raffaella, of Southold and Manhattan, from his first marriage. He is also survived by his second wife, Nancy Manfredi, and  two grandchildren, Fiona and Rory.

Visitation will be Tuesday from 2 to 4 p.m. and from 7 to 9 p.m. at Weigand Bros. Funeral Home in Williston Park. A funeral mass will be  Wednesday at 11:15 a.m. at Saint Aidan's R.C. Church in Williston Park. (It will also be livestreamed at vimeo.com/699880359.)

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations in his name be made to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.