For the Carannantes, family is everything.
It’s family who, 50 years ago, created their iconic Brother’s Pizza restaurant on Route 33. Two generations of family who have owned and operated it ever since. It was brothers Antimo and Gennaro Carannante who put everything they had into making it a successful business.
Their sons, Antonio and Pasquale, practically grew up in the restaurant. Now the cousins and their siblings are stepping up, committed to maintaining the family legacy. Though of course, the first generation is still involved in the restaurant, as well as its catering arm, NJ Weddings and Events, as well as the Blend Bar and Bistro, which the Carannantes opened next door in 2012.
Now, the family is celebrating Brother’s golden anniversary with a yearlong campaign to honor and support charitable organizations in the community that have, in one way or another, been part of the Carannante family journey.
“We feel Hamilton Township is a part of our family too,” Antimo says. “Without Hamilton Township, we are nothing.”
Brother’s started up the campaign on Jan. 15 with a fundraiser to benefit the Sea Girt Patriot Polar Plunge, and more specifically, Team Fajardo Freeze, which takes part in the annual wintry dip into the ocean in memory of Juan Fajardo, a state police lieutenant from Columbus who died in a motorcycle accident in 2021.
“We decided this year, for the 50th anniversary, we wanted to give back to the community while also bringing the community together,” Antonio says.
February 1973 is when Brother’s officially opened its doors. “Instead of doing one thing really big once for the whole year, to do something monthly. So one Sunday a month, we pick a different nonprofit and donate 50% of our sales from that day to that charity. All of these organizations are really local, or dear to our community, ourselves and our customers,” Antonio says.
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When Antimo Carannante took over the running of the restaurant in 1973, it had already been a pizzeria for several years. Before he came in, it had been owned by members of his wife, Albina’s, family.
From the start, Antimo knew what kind of restaurant that he wanted to operate: one that focused on quality ingredients, quality service and quality preparation. He wanted to serve food that would properly represent his hometown of Naples, Italy.
He knew someone else who would share his ideas on how to properly run a restaurant: his brother, Gennaro. Gennaro Carannante still lived in Naples, but in 1981, he agreed to come to the U.S. and be a 50-50 partner with Antimo. For more than 30 years, Gennaro and Antimo worked together at the restaurant, even as the next generation began to take a larger and larger role.
On April 7, 2022, while at his home in Naples, Gennaro Carannante passed away at the age of 66.
“I say this not because he was my brother, but he was just a great guy,” Antimo says. “He would be very proud of what we’re doing today. He really, really cared about this community. I miss him a lot.”
Though Gennaro did not live to see the 50th anniversary, his family says that he is there with them all the same.
“He was my godfather. We looked up to him as a father figure,” Antonio says. “He was like the backbone. He taught us everything we knew. As kids, we grew up here. We grew up in Hamilton, but we grew up in Brother’s Pizza. They gave us, both my father and my uncle, the foundation of who we are today.
“We weren’t handed anything. We worked for it. We cleaned dishes, we cleaned bathrooms. Unfortunately, he passed away just shy of this celebration, but we’re trying to do everything he would have wanted us to do to carry on our business.”
At the end of the day on Jan. 15, the fundraiser for the Sea Girt Patriot Polar Plunge tallied $4,733.56 in donations. Antonio notes the significance of that number.
“He passed away on April 7—4/7—the restaurant is on Route 33, he was born in 1956. $4,733.56,” Antonio says. “I mean, down to the penny you could associate the number with someone looking over us like that. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s still watching over us.”
Which is not to say that Brother’s Pizza is done taking in donations to support Team Fajardo Freeze. The donation bucket and display remains up in the restaurant, and customers can continue to donate until the next fundraiser, scheduled for Sunday, Feb.19 and set to benefit Deborah Heart and Lung Center in Pemberton.
“My brother, he didn’t want to buy cheap stuff, he wanted to buy number one,” Antimo remembers. “Whenever he could buy better cheese, better bread, whatever — quality was always number one.”
The restaurant hasn’t lost sight of those principles, either.
“The key is using the freshest ingredients,” Antonio says. “Nowadays, they sell everything prepackaged. Prepackaged cheese, premade dough, pre-sliced pepperoni, prepared sausage. The key is to make sure we’re not using those products. We still make fresh sauce every day. We shred our own cheese, we slice our own pepperoni. We make homemade fresh mozzarella. Maintaining the quality of the ingredients is the plain and simple answer.”
That commitment to quality never wavered, even during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Sometimes, it is not worth selling unless it’s quality,” Antonio says. “There were a lot of shortages during the pandemic, and we found that sometimes it was better to say that we didn’t have something than to serve something with substandard ingredients.”
“Our customers understood what we were going through,” Pasquale adds. “They supported us.”
The restaurant has changed over the years, although anyone who has been a long-time customer will recognize familiar touches that remind them of the history of the place. The pizza ovens, for example, are still the ones that were there when the restaurant opened.
“We’ve gradually changed some things, but tried to keep a touch of originality in the location,” Antimo says.
The next generation, which includes Gennaro’s son Pasquale and Antimo’s sons Antonio and Pasquale, may be the ones who will fully take over one day, but the first generation is not yet ready to step away. On any given morning, a person could stop into the restaurant before it opened and find Antimo, Albina, or Gennaro’s wife, Carmela, on hand to make sure the day goes smoothly.
Antonio notes that the generations haven’t come together only on the ownership side. Brother’s customers have taken a similar journey.
“(Antimo and Gennaro) started this in the 70’s, all the kids were born in the 80’s, and by the 90’s, we were all working here,” he says. “As a teenager, I remember seeing grandparents with their kids, and now those kids are parents and bringing in their kids. There’s all manner of generational customers that come in. They have been our anchors and helped us grow our business.”
Even when long-time customers move away, they still remain loyal to their favorite pizzeria. Pasquale says he has a list of customers that he ships pizzas to on a regular basis.
“We’ve got customers who grew up here and moved down to South Carolina. I mail them pizzas every five weeks,” Pasquale says.
Now the next generation is starting to have kids of their own. Will they carry on the family legacy? The cousins, Antonio and Pasquale, laugh at the question, seeing as how the next generation’s children, seven in total, are all between the ages of 2 months and 7 years. There is still plenty of time for them to decide.
“As my father told us, they never forced us to do this,” Antonio says. “They said, ‘We want you to be happy, get educated, and do what makes you happy.’”
Brother’s Pizza on 33, 871 State Highway 33, Hamilton NJ 08619. Phone: (609) 586-2707. email: brotherspizza33@gmail.com.
Antimo Carannante, second from left, with his sons Antonio and Pasquale, and Pasquale Carannante, far right, who holds a framed photograph of his father, Antimo’s brother Gennaro, who passed away in 2022. (Photo by Mike Schwartz/mssphoto.com.),
