POINT PLEASANT BEACH — Growing up in Point Pleasant Beach within an Italian family that loved to cook, Meg LaManna experienced the joy of good food and learned her way around the kitchen at a young age.

Since then, the restaurant industry veteran and 2025 “Chopped” cooking TV show champion has devoted her life to the creation of exceptional fare, most recently as the owner of both Point Pleasant Beach-based eatery Mugsy’s Mercantile as well as Meg LaManna Private Events, through which she offers locally sourced, chef-inspired food that will warm the heart and soul of any private occasion.

“Ever since I was 4 years old, I was always in the kitchen,” said LaManna, 41, a Bay Head resident whose grandparents lived just down the street from her until she was 8 and with whom she spent many happy hours in the kitchen.

“My grandfather was from Calabria and my grandmother was from Naples, so food was a central part of our family’s life, especially on Sundays, when the amazing aroma of Sunday sauce, sausages and meatballs would fill the house,” she said. “There was always a beautiful salad right from the garden and my father used to catch fresh fish from his boat, unloading whole tuna and mahi mahi that we’d put on the grill. It was a great way to grow up.”

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Relative to the other children gathered around their table, however, LaManna’s interest in the food was noticeably different.

“All of the kids wanted to eat the meatballs,” she said, “but I wanted to learn how to make them.”

Though she wasn’t considering a career as a chef after high school, that option ended up on the table after a short stint at Rider University in Lawrenceville proved to be the wrong fit.

“I left Rider after one semester, moved back home, and started cooking dinner every night, so my mom suggested that I go to culinary school,” said LaManna, who promptly followed through. “I ended up graduating from Brookdale Community College’s Culinary Education Center in Asbury Park with a degree in culinary arts and from Georgian Court University in Lakewood with bachelor’s degrees in psychology and business management because I knew I wanted my own business.”

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Learning the ropes

Throughout her time in culinary school and for the better part of the next two decades, LaManna worked tirelessly to hone her craft, from early roles as a prep cook at Bonefish Grill in Brick and Ashes Steakhouse (now Char) in Red Bank to working for some of the industry’s most acclaimed East Coast-based chefs.

“Around 2009-2010, my family moved to Florida, so I went to Miami and spent several years working under Gastón Acurio at the Mandarin Oriental Miami hotel and “Iron Chef” winner Michelle Bernstein at her seasonal farm-to-table restaurant Michy’s (since rebranded as Cena), and I also helped open Quality Meats Miami Beach as a junior sous chef,” LaManna said. “All of those experiences helped shape me as a chef and I owe Miami a debt of gratitude; I loved being on the ground floor of opening a restaurant and learning how to do it for my own business someday.”

LaManna ultimately returned to the Jersey Shore in the late 2010s, where she served as the executive chef at 26 West on the Navesink in Red Bank and Raven & the Peach in Fair Haven. An invitation to participate in Food Network’s popular culinary competition “Chopped” in March 2020 ultimately got postponed several times due to the pandemic and LaManna’s own busy schedule, but LaManna eventually competed on the show and was named Chopped Champion in March 2025.

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Mugsy’s, MLPE and more

After working as an executive chef at two restaurants during and after the pandemic, LaManna was ready for a new professional challenge.

“I was at a pivotal point in my career where I could keep working for other people or spread my wings, and I wanted a chance to do my own thing and not answer to anyone,” she said.

“I’d always wanted to have a sauce line, just like the sauce I made with my grandparents, so in 2020 I started canning my own sauces,” LaManna said of her Mugsy’s line, which she sold at farmers markets and branded based on her grandfather’s endearing childhood nickname for her.

“My sauces took off, and after people were increasingly asking me to cook at their house and cater events, I realized that I should offer private event services,” she said. “I ended up opening our brick-and-mortar retail space, Mugsy’s Mercantile — a take-out/grab-and-go lunch spot in Point Pleasant Beach — in 2022 so that I could have a kitchen in the back to prep for our private events and retail space up front where I could offer pre-made soups, salads, sandwiches, pasta dishes, dressings, sauces, jams and honey.”

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LaManna describes Meg LaManna Private Events (MLPE) as “a private chef experience.”

“We offer menus you can choose from, but we also create menus to fit the occasion and client; from dry-aged steaks to seafood, Asian cuisine and more, we build menus around the client’s preferences,” LaManna explained. “We support everything from weddings and bridal showers to bachelorette parties, birthday parties, and backyard barbecues with taco and slider stations, but our true passion is sit-down dinners with tailor-made menus.”

While the majority of MLPE’s jobs are in people’s private homes — “some clients choose to rent yacht clubs, firehouses and farms, and they don’t have to have a kitchen because I can do a kitchen build-out with our tent, Blackstone grill, tabletop fryer and convection ovens,” LaManna said — she said that no occasion is too large or small to celebrate.

“I’ve done cozy dinners for as few as four people to lavish weddings for 180,” she said of events whose prices are based on the season, day, menu selection, and number of guests and which can range from $500 for mid-week, off-season dinners to weddings over $25,000. While her customers hail primarily from Monmouth and Ocean County, “a lot of our clients have multiple homes, so we’ve also done parties in North Jersey, upstate New York, and Bucks County, Pennsylvania,” LaManna said.

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Elevating the classics

Among trends in farm-to-table fare, LaManna believes that the spicy vodka chicken cutlet movement has been overdone.

“We recently did a ‘Cosa Nostra’ spicy chicken cutlet sandwich with broccoli rabe and put our own fun spin on that craze,” LaManna said, “but I’m a huge fan of pasta ramen and other Japanese-Italian hybrid food, and we’re also seeing tremendous success with our recently expanded line of homemade cookies.

“We have gluten-free chocolate chip and snickerdoodle cookies (and all of our bakery items at Mugsy’s are gluten-free), but we also offer two new cookies each week and are always coming up with cool ideas; we recently featured a Bananas Foster cookie made with brown sugar, rum, caramel sauce, toasted marshmallow, butterscotch and ripe bananas and people loved them,” she said. “I like to take classics and elevate them to make them more modern.”

Among industry challenges, LaManna said food prices have increased significantly and that the seasonality of her business can be difficult to manage.

“There’s a big difference in our numbers from June through September versus January through March, so we’ve added cooking classes to our offering to diversify ourselves,” she said. “In the winter, we offer meal prep, through which people can sign up for five pre-made seasonal, local and organic lunches and/or dinners based on a menu we publish each week, and we also enjoy collaborating with other local restaurants to create fun ticketed dinners.”

Running Mugsy’s and MLPE with her wife Natalie, a fellow restaurant industry veteran, LaManna said that their experienced team of 12 servers and bartenders make everything possible.

“All of our team members are either family or friends we’ve worked with in the industry; all are cross-trained at MLPE and Mugsy’s and are extremely versatile, and it’s only through their outstanding support that we’re able to do this,” she said, adding that being able to work with Natalie to bring front- and back-of-house operations together is truly a gift. “Every day I get to witness Natalie’s natural charisma and abilities with our guests and clients and I couldn’t ask for a better partner in business or in life.”

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With recent demand for her services exploding, LaManna is excited for a bright future. “I just brought on another chef in September and would love to continue growing Mugsy’s and MLPE by adding even more chefs,” she said.

As for her favorite parts of her job, “I’m a very hands-on owner and I love being in the kitchen,” LaManna said. “I also love our Point Pleasant Beach location, which will always be home base.”

“Ultimately, I love the way food makes people feel and there’s nothing more rewarding than going out to a table after they’ve eaten and finding our guests so happy,” LaManna said. “Though the hours are hard, the pure satisfaction guests derive and the opportunity to share good food with our community and bring people together is a beautiful thing and the reason I do what I do.”

Meg LaManna Private Events

Location: 629 Arnold Ave., Point Pleasant Beach

Phone: 732-903-6210

Launched: 2020

Owner: Meg LaManna

Website: mugsysmercantile.com/private-events

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: ‘Chopped’ champ learned food from grandparents, caters at Jersey Shore