Super-sized and super-fast

Unique "volcanic" oven sparks new pizzeria

By: Molly Petrilla
   WEST WINDSOR — Inside Magma Pizza, you can’t avoid evidence of the volcano.
   It’s on the lava-spewn walls (red, with flecks of yellow and orange).
   It’s in the air, which has the distinct smell of a grill firing up for a backyard barbecue.
   And it’s there in the form of a 10-foot-tall oven and rotisserie fashioned to look like one of the massive humps of a volcano.
   That oven is what makes Magma — which is located next to Sam’s Club at Nassau Park shopping center — so different from other pizza joints in the area, according to owner Gabe Mahayni, a resident of Emily Drive.
   While pizzas are traditionally cooked from the top, Magma’s oven consists of a rotating grate placed over "lava rocks" that can cook a 16-inch thin-crust pizza in just two minutes.
   Mr. Mahayni’s business partner, Nobile Attie, came up with the concept four years ago. Drawing from his experience designing pizza ovens for big industry names like Bobby Flay, Bertucci’s Brick Oven Ristorante and Goodfella’s Old World Brick Oven Pizza, Mr. Attie created the Magma oven, which measures 8 feet in diameter and can cook up to 17 large pizzas from both the top and bottom at the same time.
   The oven is heated by gas — which Mr. Attie claims is easier to control than wood or charcoal — and the lava rocks on its surface help maintain a high temperature.
   "We wanted to create a pizzeria that offers good pizza, but fast," Mr. Mahayni explains. "With our pizzas, you don’t have to wait 15 or 20 minutes for it to cook."
   Though Mr. Attie has continued his work building ovens throughout the country, Mr. Mahayni insists that the Magma oven is the only one of its kind, and is currently awaiting a patent.
   The two men are particularly excited about its capacity to cook "vulcana" — long pieces of dough filled with veggetables, meat or cheese. While they are currently baking vulcanas in the pizza oven, Mr. Mahayni says that by December, he plans to steam the dough, add fillings and then roast it on the rotisserie that surrounds the oven’s volcano.
   By the end of the process, the vulcanas will resemble roasted Chinese dumplings, he said, and will be sold by the foot.
   In addition to vulcanas, Magma’s menu also includes a variety of pizzas and calzones, all of which are prepared in the large oven. Dough and sauce are made on the premises, Mr. Mahayni says, and crusts are available in whole wheat and yeast-free, in addition to traditional.
   While Mr. Attie’s background in the pizza business dates back more than 20 years — when he constructed his first brick pizza oven — Mr. Mahayni is a relative newcomer to the business. He worked for several years as a structural engineer, managing a handful of hundred-million-dollar projects in the tri-state area, and spent the past decade on Wall Street managing multi-million-dollar accounts as an equity and options trader.
   Mr. Mahayni and Mr. Attie became friends in 1985, and about four years ago, they came up with the concept for Magma Pizza. Last year, Mr. Attie had enough of day-dreaming and left his job in New York.
   "I decided, ‘That’s it. We’re going to give this a shot,’" he recalls.
   The restaurant opened on June 19, but Mr. Mahayni says he purposely waited until last month to begin advertising.
   "We wanted to be ready," he says, "and I think now we’re ready."
   In the future, Mr. Mahayni says he hopes to expand the business and establish half a dozen locations in Central Jersey downtown areas.
   But in the meantime, Mr. Attie is working on another innovative creation: a way to transport pizzas for delivery so that they remain oven-hot and fresh. That’s all he’ll say about it right now, though.