Phantom Gourmet: Comella's In Bedford & 12 Other Locations

BEDFORD - How can you feed a whole lot of people, a whole lot of food, without leaving a hole in your wallet? It's actually quite simple. You just go to Comella's.

"Comella's is an Itailan restaurant, all homemade food made on premise… and the portions are such that they usually leave with a doggie bag," JP Comella said.

"All our recipes are my grandmother's recipes. We ate pasta as kids 3 or 4 times a week. We made sauce fresh every day," shared his brother Matt.

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Family patriarch Gene Comella started the concept almost thirty years ago, and the business has expanded rapidly with the next generation leading the charge.

"Initially Comella's opened the first location in 1988 in Wellesley. It morphed in 1995 in West Newton and from there, it was hot dinners, prepared dinners to go," Matt recalled. "When we got out of school my brothers and I decided to open more locations. So since then there's a total of 13 locations."

"As time went on, people needed a place to sit," JP said. "We've expanded our seating area. Now in two of our locations, Hingham and Bedford, we have full service sit-down restaurants."

Whether you want to eat in, take-out, or pick up a party platter, the menu offers the same dishes at the same incredibly affordable prices. Caprese salads with fresh mozzarella; fully stacked Italian sandwiches; Chicken broccoli and ziti; Homemade sausages; a secret family pasta recipe known as The Mess; and even some outstanding Buffalo wings. But the most loyal Comella's customers always go for the Ravioli.

"We initially started as a ravioli company," Matt said, "so the raviolis are a big part of our business. They're fresh, they're homemade. We have spinach ravioli, we have cheese ravioli, mushroom ravioli, a great lobster ravioli, a squid ink lobster ravioli which is real knuckle and claw meat, and we have a squash ravioli."

Comella's also has legendary, extra-large meatballs.

"Meatballs are hand-rolled. They're made on site. Our grandmother's recipe, only the freshest ingredients there, and they're about the size of a racquetball," Matt described.

Pair it up with their homemade fusilli pasta, and you have the Comella brother's personal favorite meal.

"It's what I eat when I come into Comella's," Matt shared. "I always order fusilli and two meatballs. It's cooked to order, so it's a great dish. My family gets it. My friends get it. It's one of our best-selling pastas."

Another popular choice is the Chicken Parmigiana, with the perfect mix of crispy, juicy, saucy, and cheesy. But the Eggplant Parm might be even better.

"One of the best things we have on the menu," JP declared. "It's thinly sliced. It's breaded by hand daily. It's lightly fried, and then baked in the oven, in our marinara sauce. It's layered with Romano cheese in between the layers and it's actually layered up similar to a lasagna would be, 5, 6, 7 layers deep."

Out of everything on Comella's menu, the item that gets the biggest buzz, because it's by far the best value, is the classic, hand-tossed, cheese pizza that costs less than six bucks.

"It's a 16 inch, industry leading $5.99 cheese pizza. Fresh dough, sauce and cheese. It's 8 slices. You can easily feed multiple people. It's a full, large pizza," JP said.

"We pride ourselves on giving value to our customers, and we think we do that with the pizzas," Matt continued. "We like to see our boxes at every soccer game on Saturday afternoons and every Friday night football game, any party that they're having. We love to see multiple, multiple Comella's boxes there."

Many of those boxes are filled with the Buffalo style Olivia Rose pizza, named after Matt's daughter.

"It's the number one selling pizza," he said. "It's breaded chicken or grilled chicken, hot sauce, and bleu cheese. It's fantastic."

From West Roxbury to Westwood, Melrose to Marblehead, and the full-service spots in Hingham and Bedford, the Comella's are committed to the serving great food, and serving the community.

"You can walk into any Comella's at any given night, and somebody's father is in there, or somebody's mother or somebody's brother or sister that you're saying hello to. All of our staff, and we call them team members, we like to have great synergy. Everybody working together, everybody having a good time," Matt said.

Comella's has 13 locations in Greater Boston. You can find them all at comellasrestaurants.com.

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