Alison Roman is a New York Times bestselling author, former New York Times Cooking columnist, and one of the most widely followed voices in American home cooking. Her cookbooks, including Dining In (2017), Nothing Fancy (2019), Sweet Enough (2023), and Something from Nothing (2025), are built around pantry-driven, practical recipes: real food for people who want to cook well without ceremony. In 2023, Roman brought that philosophy into a physical space, opening First Bloom in Bloomville, New York, a small hamlet in the Western Catskills. The shelves carry the staples Roman has always written about. The refrigerators hold things made in-house: brothy beans, golden chicken stock, and tomato sauce—the kind of provisions that are best homemade, but most cooks rarely have time for.

A Very Good Tomato Sauce began as one of those in-house items, a sauce Roman made for the store's refrigerator case until demand made a jarred version necessary. Kettle-cooked in small batches, it comes in three varieties: Classic Garlic and Tomato, Spicy Tomato with Fennel, and Caramelized Shallot and Anchovy, each made with real olive oil, with visible bits of sliced garlic and tomato, and sweetness that comes simply from onions and tomatoes.