‘The secret’s in the sauce’: At Polish Town pizzeria, it’s made with love

Angelo Passante is a member of the half-million club. 

It’s an estimate, of course, because any pizza-maker as busy as he’s been for  as many years as he’s been making pizza, couldn’t possibly have kept count.

The long-time owner of Carlo’s Pizza Oven in Riverhead started making pizzas more than 50 years ago, before the age of 12.

Passante started out washing dishes at a pizzeria in Hauppauge at age 10. 

“That was before the child labor laws came into play,” he laughs. “And by the time I was 11, I knew everything about the kitchen. And by 12, I was starting to make pizza.”

He takes an educated guess at the average number of pizzas he made every week at every pizza parlor he’s worked at since he started, and calculates the total to date to be somewhere north of 500,000.

“I worked in places where 1,200 pies in a week was a slow week,” Passante says. “I worked at a place in Islip Terrace that was strictly delivery. He did 1,700 pies a week. I worked there six days a week, open to close. Almost all of them pies, I made. I didn’t have to deal with the phones and counters or anything. You stand there and you’re just throwing pizza.”

Since 1976, Passante has worked at a pizza place named Carlo’s — there were several of them around the Queens-Long Island area, owned by a man named Charlie Maggio. 

In the mid-1980s, Maggio asked him to look at a new pizza shop on Osborn Avenue in Riverhead. It had recently opened in a brand new shopping plaza, but was up for sale. 

“Charlie goes, ‘It’s a perfect location.’ The first time I came out here, I got off at Exit 73, and there was nothing there,” Passante recalls. He thought his boss had lost his mind. 

“But once I got on Pulaski, and I saw the schools. Then I went down the road and I saw the courts, and I thought, you know, this could work,” he says. 

The rest is pizza history. 

Passante has owned Carlo’s Pizza Oven since May 1987. 

“I’ve watched three graduating classes go through the school district, from kindergarten to 12th grade,” Passante says. He knows people he served when they were kids who are now coming in with their grandchildren.

And now one of those kids is taking over Carlo’s.  

Piotr (“Pete”) Kurzyna,  like Passante, started working in the pizzeria at a young age, while a student at Riverhead High School. He was working at a local deli at the time and a guy who worked at Carlo’s came in and told him the pizzeria was looking for help.

“So I came here and started out washing dishes and never left,” Kurzyna, now 34, says.

Kurzyna immigrated to the United States from Poland with his family when he was 12 years old. 

Even after he graduated from Riverhead High School in 2009 and went off to Mercy College on a lacrosse scholarship, Kurzyna commuted home to Riverhead to work at the pizzeria on weekends.

“Thanks to Ange,” Kurzyna says, referring to his one-time boss and former partner,  he owns his own business, gives back to the community as a volunteer firefighter, and has a family of his own. “This has been a dream come true.” 

Kurzyna and his wife Louisa have a 10-month-old daughter. He is the first assistant chief in the Riverhead Fire Department, which he joined a decade ago.

Standing in front of the glass case where three shelves are stocked with specialty pies — including a kielbasa pizza, a nod to his heritage and to the restaurant’s location in Polish Town — Kurzyna looks around at the place that’s been a home base for him since his teen years.

Passante taught him everything he needed to know about making pizza — the secret’s in the sauce, Passante says. “At Carlo’s we cook our own sauce.” He taught Kurzyna how to run the business. And he took him on as a partner several years ago.

“Being your own boss is good,” Kurzyna says. “But this place is special. My friends, my brother, my cousins, all working here. We grew up in this place.”

Kurzyna has obvious affection for the pizzeria and for the man who took him into the business. He recalls how his whole circle of friends and their dates went to Passante’s home before their senior prom to pose for pictures in his yard. He scrolls through 15 years worth of photos on Facebook to find the prom pictures from 2009. He stops at one of him and his prom date posing with Passante, who is beaming with pride. 

“Look how young he was,” Kurzyna says, ribbing Passante, who had a thick, dark head of hair back then. 

Passante notes that Kurzyna has changed a lot too from the tall skinny kid in the black tux in the photo.

“I’m looking forward to running this as my own,” Kurzyna says of Carlo’s. “But I will still insist that he keep coming here.” Passante comes in every day, in spite of his “retirement.”

“What else would I do with myself?” Passante asks, shrugging, palms of his \ outstretched hands facing up. “I get up, get dressed, I come here. I’ve been doing that for — what — 37 years?”

At 62 and fighting “a little battle with cancer,” Passante says work keeps him going. 

Kurzyna agrees. “I’m afraid if he stops, he’ll give up. I won’t let that happen.”

“There’s always something that needs to be done,” Passante adds.