The Pizza You Love Is Back

By VALERIYA PONOMAROVA
Contributing Writer

I Love New York Pizza reopened on Friday as a completely new business run by Tony Khal and Andrew Simsek, partners with the owner of the building, Havzi Ipek. Located at 850 Madison Ave., Khal

explained that this time there is a new management and new people. But it still has the same name.

“I heard everybody loves I Love New York. It’s popular,” said Khal, one of the partners of I Love New York Pizza that returned to Madison Avenue.

“These two gentlemen and I decided to run this place,” said Ipek, talking about Khal and Simsek. Ipek is one of the four brothers who do business at Z. Ipek & Sons, Inc. which is a general contractor company.

I Love New York Pizza was open in 2012 under different building owners and management when it shut down. Khal doesn’t know what happened to the previous owners or their business.  He also has no relations to them.

Ipek bought the building on November 27, 2012 for $200,000, according to the City of Albany Department of Assessment and Taxation. The city records also list that the previous owners had the place for about seven years after they bought it on July 15, 2005, from Stjefan and Nikola Ivezic.

“It’s been closed for a few months,” said Ipek about the I Love New York Pizza business that was operated here previously. He couldn’t say for exactly how long, and the City of Albany Department of Assessment and Taxation do not have updated records of this. A family lives upstairs at 850 Madison Ave., but is unrelated to the pizzeria’s employees.

All that Ipek mentioned about the previous owners of this building, Lulja and Gjoka Camaj, was that they lived in New York, N.Y. and “wanted to go back home.” He received permission to use the same name for the pizzeria. The phone numbers that are listed on the Internet for the Camaj’s are out of service. However, the City of Albany Department of Assessment and Taxation list that the Camaj’s live on 34 Stillwell Ave. in Yonkers, N.Y.

“I used to actually go there, when it was open before,” said Paul Lafond, 22, who works security at Bogies on Ontario Street, around the corner from I Love New York Pizza. “They shut down all of a sudden.”

He never knew who the owners were in the two years he’s worked at Bogies, but is looking forward to going to I Love New York Pizza again.

“My heart was really in opening something simple like a pizza place,” Ipek said. The fact that three other pizza shops just a few building spaces away and across the street have been operating for many years, such as Paesan’s Pizza, Madison’s Pizza and Trio’s Pizzeria & Deli, don’t threaten Ipek.

“It’s going to be a family business,” said Khal, who lives in Troy, N.Y. with his wife and 9-month-old son.
He hopes to stay at this location and pass on the pizzeria to his son in the future. However, if they grow well, the partners hope to open some more businesses.

“My goal is to open everywhere,” he said. The other I Love New York Pizza is in Colonie, and the people running it are not related to Madison Avenue’s pizzeria. This pizzeria name is not a chain restaurant, according to Ipek.

Khal used to work at Madison’s Pizza about three years ago for several months. Ever since then, he thought of opening a pizza place here, he said. He was encouraged by friends and cousins who have had experience with running pizza places like Golden Grain Pizza, located in Clifton Park.

“‘If you do good quality pizzas and good quality food, and the best service, you will always survive,’” is the advice his friends gave him. According to Ipek, this I Love New York Pizza is not using any of the recipes from the previous pizzeria.

“It’s hard to open a business these days,” said Joanis Neli and explained that, to him, it seems that students are not spending money like they used to. Neli works at Paesan’s Pizza across the road and around the corner on Ontario Street. Paesan’s Pizza has been operating since 1994, which is run by the Scavio family. Their prices range from a slice of vegetable pizza for $2.39 to a slice of Buffalo Chicken pizza for $2.89.

Neli believes that the opening of another pizzeria is going to slow down business for everybody, but that his pizzeria is the best and that if people are happy, they just keep going, he said.

“Business is risky, but I’m not afraid of anything,” said Khal.

I Love New York Pizza is going to be open from 10 a.m. to 4 a.m. Thursday through Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. Sunday through Wednesday. It will offer special prices on their menu and pizza slices to college students if they show proof of their student status. The partners will also come to college campuses to hand out fliers sometime this month.

The pizzeria plans to have subs, wings, rolls, Italian dinners like baked ziti, chicken parmesan, stuffed shells, ravioli and much more. One cheese pizza slice is $2, one pizza slice with a topping is $2.50, and the rest is $3. A calzone is $5.99, Stromboli is $7.99, and the drinks range from cans of soda at $1, bottles at $1.75 to a Red Bull at $3, according to Khal. For a comparison- at Madison’s Pizza, the costs of one cheese pizza slice, a pizza slice with a topping and the rest of the slices are the same as I Love New York Pizza.

The partners and owner will continuously try different companies for ingredients they feel taste best, according to Ipek, since a number of places offer products.

I Love New York Pizza’s goal is to stand out from the other pizzerias. Khal plans to offer a Mediterranean special called “Tantuni Wrap” on their menu, which is a wrap containing chopped meats and vegetables.

“You’re not going to see that anywhere else but here,” said Khal. The partners will have completed and ready menus to be send out by Oct. 30. They have already mailed out about 260,000 fliers to residences in the surrounding areas.

Khal also explained that they have an idea to create a special order option for the customers to request food any way they want to, kind of like a ‘make-your-own’ type. The pizzeria does deliveries, too. Khal said they will even deliver to areas like Whitehall Road, Central Avenue, Downtown Albany, UAlbany, and other places that he claims the nearby pizzerias don’t do.

“We’re going to be everywhere,” Khal said. “Whoever calls us, we always will come.”

He has about five people helping him out with starting the business. But for now, the only people fully running it are Khal and Simsek. They will consider staffing more employees once they get a feel for how business is going.

Ipek will occasionally visit the pizzeria, see how the partners are doing and offer support. Since his wife runs Ipek’s La Bella Pizza in East Greenbush, he is familiar with the kind of community connections that occurs when the people doing business and their customers come to know each other. Here, he would like to create something even better.

“He’s going to put a lot of money into making something better than the other places,” said David Venie about Ipek and the pizzeria. He worked for Ipek for nine years and was helping him put the finishing touches on the signs and exterior appearance of the pizzeria on opening day. “If he’s involved in it, it’s very good. I can tell you that much.”

“Amazing. I love it,” said Jesus Frias between bites of his pizza. Frias is a sophomore student studying at UAlbany. He used to go to Madison’s Pizza, which he said is “okay,” but said that he would come to I Love New York Pizza again. “I like this one better. They toast it better,” he explained.

“Had no complaints, at all,” said James Brown, a visitor from New York City, who happened to stop by I Love New York Pizza because it was in a convenient location. The customer service was good, he added.

“Eating food is a lot of fun,” said Ipek and laughed. If he didn’t have other business engagements, he would just want to be here, but he wants this place to be successful for Khal and Simsek. “You really have to love people to be in business … if you’re going to go in there just for the money, forget about it.”

To Khal, it’s always important to make his customers smile. “We’re going to make them happy no matter what.”