Living the Dream: Umberto’s Anthony Fabbri’s Pizza Passion & New ‘Amici’ Place

Anthony Fabbri & family, Amici storefront & Anthony Fabbri
Photos/Anthony Fabbri & Elaine Van Develde

When Fair Haven’s iconic Umberto’s pizzeria closed, Anthony Fabbri, son of pizza icon Silvio, said his dad would have said, “OK. It’s time to go home.” Home, as he knew it, was where the heart was and his and his family’s heart was and has always been with their passion — pizza.

And now, just more than a year after the doors to the brick-and-mortar Umberto’s, Anthony, like his pop advised, has brought his passion back home again — right to his pizza-flipping heart.

When Anthony and his family, after more than 30 years, said goodbye to their Fair Haven pizzeria home in March of 2020, Anthony thought the locked doors would symbolize the end of his pizza-making days. But he underestimated his own calling. His slice of life.

After a stint of making pies at Scala’s in the West End section of Long Branch and getting a nudge from a local realtor and friend for a year, Anthony realized it was just his birthright — his passion pie-on-the-ground, not in the sky, if you will. He knew he was just meant to make pizza.

“Obviously this is where I was meant to go (in life),” Anthony said in a recent chat. “This is what I was born to do. It’s honestly the one thing I’m really good at.”

Now, in early September, he, in partnership with his wife Melanie (and the kids, of course), will be opening his own pizzeria at the spot in Eastpointe Plaza on Route 36 in Atlantic Highlands that was formerly Maria’s. He’s calling it Amici. It means friends in Italian. The name choice came naturally to Anthony.

After all, he said, “We literally wouldn’t be able to get this pizzeria without our friends helping out.” And when he says friends, he means lifetime friends and their families pitching in without a flinch.

It’s been a twisted, sometimes bumpy, road that Anthony has taken to get to this slice of his life. Yet, it’s really always been with him. He was reasonably content, climbing a corporate ladder at a retail chain, making pizza at Scala’s, dabbling in a bit of real estate business and running a food truck.

So, why do this? And why now? Well, call it karmic circumstance. Fair Haven friend and real estate agent who helped with the Umberto’s sale, Derek Debree, called last summer. He had heard about the pizzeria and thought of Anthony. A year later, after a few nudges, he called one last time, feeling in his Fair Haven gut that it was the right move for Anthony. “That last time he asked if I was sure, because it was now or never, I said, ‘OK, I’ll take it!'” Anthony said.

What would Silvio say about his new competitor?
“Honestly, if he were alive, Umberto’s would still be there and he’d be mad that I was opening a pizzeria two miles away,” Anthony said with a grin. “Really, he’d probably say, ‘Hey! What’s a matta with you? Are you stupid?
You open up a place 10 minutes
away from me?'”

Naturally, it’s all in the family, but Anthony said he had to fess up that Silvio really wasn’t the one who taught him to make pizza. It was more his mom Maryrose, he said. “I honestly didn’t make an awful lot of pizza with my dad,” Anthony said. “It was more my mom who taught me, and I’m the fastest pizza maker in the family now. Oh, he was great, but I was young. I stopped working there at 17. I sold granite counter tops, worked at Jack’s (in Long Branch, and soon coming to Fair Haven as well, in the Umberto spot), and when dad passed away, I hadn’t been working there, but went back. I was 25 then.”

Anthony is 32 now, and “been making pizza for 30 years, so it’s just what I do best, what I was meant to do,” he said, realizing he’d been making pizza since he was a 2-year-old tyke.

What’s his pie-making secret, though? The personal touch, or flip, is key as he sees it. “I feel like a lot of pizzeria owners don’t make the pizza,” he said. “I do. Always will. With Amici, as with Umberto, I plan to be there and actually make the pizza, not hire 30 other people to make it.”

Another piece of the pie secret is the sauce. “It’s in the sauce,” Anthony said. “Everybody has their own way of making pizza sauce. First, though, my way is that it has to be homemade sauce. More importantly, you never cook your sauce before you make the pizza. That would be double cooking once it’s in the oven and you’ll burn it. You put it on raw and it cooks in the oven.” Lesson one.

Pizza, of course will be the primo feature at Amici, but there’s more on the menu.

While it’s not quite yet a fixed menu, Anthony says another specialty feature will be the homemade pastas from his recent food truck, Pasta Amore. Homemade, again, is key, he said.

And amore means love. So, he assured, the pasta is made with love and a German twist. Side note: Anthony’s mom is German. Pasta Amore pastas include: gnocchi, fried with a German lager cheese sauce and all classic Italian ways; spaezle fried in butter and garlic; fried ravioli; and all the classic pastas in classic sauces, like carbonara, bolognese, vodka and more.

Love, friends and family. That’s what brought it all together for Anthony in realizing a simple not so pie-in-the-sky passion that was meant to be.

If Silvio could see his son now? He might just say, “Ayyyyyy, you made it home! Atsa my boy!” Now, that’s amore!

Stay tuned for updates on the grand opening of Amici. In the meantime, check out their Facebook page and spread the word that Anthony and Melanie are hiring.

Like this story? Donate to Keep More like it coming. Click.