Brooklyn Bros. to double the size of the pizza pie

Brooklyn Bros. Pizzeria is about to double in size.

With the original Everett location and the newer Mukilteo site running like clockwork, Vicki Evola, her former husband Don Evola and their business partner Brett Alkan started looking for a future location.

Then two sites came up almost at the same time.

“So how do you pick?” Alkan asks.

They don’t have to.

The Evolas and Alkan plan to open two new restaurants at the same time the first half of this year — one on Camano Island at Terry’s Corner and one at the Mill Creek Town Center.

They’re confident in the chain’s ability to grow so much so fast.

While the Camano Island location will be a pizza-focused branch similar to the Mukilteo and Everett locations, the Mill Creek site will boast an extended menu and bar.

There are early plans for a mural of the New York Skyline. Each of the locations, of course, will get its own graffiti wall.

The most exciting challenge for prepping the two new stores? The ability to start from scratch. Like a puzzle, they look forward to incorporating what they know has worked and adding it into a new space. The large, rotating, circular ovens — Rotoflexes — will be a must-have at the new locations, for example.

It’s certainly keeping them busy.

Don Evola hasn’t quite planned which traditional dishes will be included at the Mill Creek location. It’s not quite top-secret, but he does think there will be more pasta entrees.

Part of the charm of Brooklyn Bros. is the stripped-down menu — pizza only, only two meats. Not to mention the dough, which has a light, crisp texture on the bottom and a distinctive flavor.

The dough, perfected by Vicki Evola when they moved to Everett, has history. “It’s like the New Yorkers say,” she says. “It’s in the water.”

Training new hires takes patience — if a new person adds too much or too little of an ingredient to a batch, they don’t find out right away, because the dough needs three days to rise before it is ready to be used.

The sausage is from a Ballard Italian sausage company that uses an Italian blend specifically for Brooklyn Bros.’ flavor, the pepperoni curling into a petite bowl is essential.

The ricotta, Polly-O, puts all other ricotta cheese to shame for its sweetness and mild texture.

“We shut down the shop if we don’t have it,” Vicki Evola insists. There’s no substitutions, no compromising with other pieces that don’t fit in the puzzle.

The tomatoes on the menu are shipped from Italy — Mt. Vesuvius San Marzanos. The tomatoes grow as non-acidic fruit thanks to the volcanic ash, meaning that they are naturally sweet as well.

Handpicked ingredients and other standards — like adhering to the Brooklyn Bros. way — pay off in dividends. Their staff has gone from four people at the Everett store’s initial launch to 35 or 40 between the current locations at 1919 Hewitt Ave., Everett, and 8326 Mukilteo Speedway, Mukilteo.

(The Evolas and Alkan declined to comment on their yearly revenue.)

Now the goal is to take their current success, and apply it to the new venues. It’s a tall order, but the Evolas built a business on the community of their staff and customers. When crowds overflow from Xfinity Arena, Vicki Evola still tries to work the front counter. It’s a great way to get to know her clientele.

The customers have returned the favor in different ways. Inside the Everett location is the original graffiti wall. What started as a few kids who wanted to draw on the wall — with the owners’ blessing — has evolved into a scrawled mass of permanent marker signatures, manifestos and even birthday announcements.

Years of layers melted into one another. But they aren’t the only marks that customers leave behind.

“So many things have been donated,” Vicki Evola said. A laminated full-color subway map over by the kitchen had been willed in a customer’s final wishes: “Donate to Brooklyn Bros. upon my death.” A vanity license plate – banged up with age — was added to the shop by Don Evola’s family members.

An oversized print of Everett’s historic Hewitt Avenue was passed along to Brooklyn Bros. by the recently shuttered Everett Museum.

Vicki Evola tells the story of one kid named Jordan who started eating at the Everett pizzeria. He loved watching the pizza guys behind the counter. As a teen, he applied online and said it was his dream to work at Brooklyn Bros.

“I saw him the other day making pizzas behind the corner, and there were three kids watching. ‘Jordan,’ I said, ‘that was you!’”