Owners Chris and Sharon Egan (amicably divorced but still formidable business partners) in 2011 made a tasting trip to California to figure out how best to add pizza to their pub menu featuring burgers and salads and Irish classics like cottage pie, fish & chips and bangers & mash.
It was not something they undertook lightly. “We know that in North Jersey, we are certainly surrounded by pizza," Chris admits, "so we had our work cut out to make sure that we are on par with, if not exceeding, the level of expectations.
The Egan pies steer clear of mimicking typical thin crust Jersey or puffy-crust Neapolitan styles. The California influence is clear–and welcome.
“Just for the fun of it," Chris adds, "we named them after famous soccer players throughout the ages.”
—The David Beckham, for example, is topped with crushed plum tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, arugula, goat cheese, dried cherries and pecans.
—The Mia Hamm features parmesan cream sauce, free-range eggs, fresh spinach and bacon lardons. The eggs are cracked raw on the uncooked pies and they bake, sunnyside up, in the gas-fired, stone oven.
—The Lionel Messi has cream sauce and cheese topped with rock shrimp, fresh lemon and garlic.
—The Hope Solo is, in fact, a calzone with a traditional white meat chicken pot pie filling, including wild mushrooms, Yukon gold potatoes, veggies and savory cream gravy.
"I put a lot of thought into those," says Sharon Egan, with a laugh, speaking of the recipes. "It was fun. actually. Chris and I did them [the names] together. We like soccer, but Chris is a real soccer fan."
Gluten-free pies are available as well. Additional toppings are $2 each.
“We wanted to offer as much to families as possible,” Chris says. “Some of our food could be seen as grown-up, and our portions are quite large, so on a number of levels this pizza oven thing really works for us.”
The late-night crowd has kept the oven in Montclair–which was installed right after St. Patrick’s Day 2012–cranking until one a.m., long after the kitchen has closed.
Chris Egan, 52, was born in London to parents from Dublin. He lived in London till he was about 16, and moved to Dublin. Early in their lives together, he and Sharon, a Montclair native, lived in Dublin for about 13 years. His family runs an Irish pub, Bruxelles, and other restaurants there. Chris learned the business while Sharon studied traditional Irish cooking at a culinary school in County Cork. The couple’s three boys were all born in Dublin.
In addition to building major pizza ovens in two locations, and running Halcyon, a seafood restaurant next door to Egan & Sons in Montclair (the restaurants share a liquor license), the Egans have decided to bring their brand of pub food and drink and neighborhood happiness to a third location far from New Jersey–Charleston, South Carolina.
Why Charleston? About two years ago, Chris was scouting a possible location in Savannah, Georgia. Why Savannah? Hard to say. Their son Peter now attends Savannah College of Art & Design, but he was still in high school at the time. Savannah, Chris says, “was a good location, but I couldn’t feel the energy there.
"Driving back, I don’t know what made me pull into Charleston–I was only two hours into the journey. But I loved it. Tuesday night in Charleston was like Saturday night in Savannah. It was busy. It was buzzing. There was a really good feel to it.”
Now the third Egan & Sons, and first out-of-state, is slated to open in September in a 100-year-old granary by the Charleston waterfront, near where the cruise ships pull in.
“We will give homage to shrimp n’ grits and fried green tomatoes," Chris says, "but certainly the menu will be familiar to people who are traveling from up north. They will recognize Egan & Sons.”
And, as Sharon points out, there are a fair number of Montclair expats living in Charleston. A cadre of regulars ready to go on Day One.
Montclair: egannsons.com
West Orange: eganswestorange.com
SUZANNE ZIMMER LOWERY is a food writer, pastry chef and culinary instructor at a number of New Jersey cooking schools. Find out more about her at suzannelowery.com.