Though anyone he's prepared his grandmother's meatballs for has raved about them, Daniel Mancini is sure to tell Italian Americans that he's only aiming to be second best.

"To an Italian, nobody's meatballs are as good as theirs, and no Italians order meatballs out," said Mancini, a 21-year South Orange resident who embarked on a radical career shift in August 2007. Formerly a businessman in Manhattan's Garment District, he decided to go into business mass-producing his grandmother's meatballs and sauce for grocery stores. He brought his family recipe to a neighbor, Carl Wolf, signed a licensing deal, and the rest is history.

Mama Mancini's Meatballs and Sunday Sauce are now available locally at Eden Gourmet, at Gourmet Garage and Neiman Marcus locations as well as some supermarkets in the region, and online. The meatballs—which have been touted by celebrity party planner Colin Cowie—are produced in East Rutherford, where they're made by hand, lightly braised and cooked in the sauce for 4 to 4.5 hours before being frozen and packaged. According to Mancini, it's the fact that the meatballs and sauce are cooked together that sets them apart.

A native of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Mancini learned about food from his grandmother, who had immigrated from Bari, Italy. He started by pulling up a stool to the sink as a young boy and watching her rinse vegetables.

"I watched her cook all the time—she cooked every meal," said Mancini, who ultimately became her apprentice in the kitchen, helping her to grind tomatoes and make sauce, and little by little learned her craft.

And he's won over some of the toughest critics: Italian Americans who swear by their own family recipe. While conducting a demo at a supermarket in Lincoln Park, N.J., Mancini convinced an initially skeptical man to try the meatballs—the first he had tried since his mother died seven years before—and the man began to cry.

Though he's obviously partial to his own recipe, Mancini has generous words to say about meatballs in general.

"I think meatballs are like pizza—they're all different, and they're all good," he said.