He first worked at Endicott-Johnson, a shoe manufacturer and the region's largest employer. In 1939 he opened a restaurant, Augies, on the north side of Endicott. The original sauce, which he called Zuzu, was wine vinegar, water, lemon juice, garlic and mint. Spiedie makers of today would likely not believe most of this information. Today, spiedies are always marinated in the sauce, sometimes for up to a week, but always for at least 24 hours.
Many recipes warn about over-cooking and getting dry spiedies.
Once cooked, the traditional means of serving is between sliced Italian bread, possibly French bread with extra sauce poured on. Commercial spiedies come in small buns. One of the interesting features of spiedies is that there is tremendous variety in the marinades and the meats used in the sandwich. Iacovelli's original sauce included mint and almost all the recipes using lamb still require mint but some recipes for other meats leave it out. Most of the commercially bottled sauces include mint.