A Piece of the Pie

Is there something in the oregano? Or is it mere coincidence that these two Jakarta pizza-makers say their businesses are about more than business? Robert Eskapa runs the sleek, upscale Izzi chain; Eddie Cordisco has just launched the homey Fast Eddie’s.  Trish Anderton talked with them about business, happiness and the perfect pie.

“I like pizza and I couldn’t get a good pizza. Nothing more clever than that.”

Robert Eskapa insists there’s no particular magic behind the success of his Izzi restaurant chain, crediting its philosophy of “good food, good value, good service”.  But since opening in 2002, the upscale joints have been sprouting up across town like mushrooms in the company’s signature Fettucine con Funghi.

There are now eight Izzis in Jakarta, and “we’re probably building another couple”,  Eskapa says. Meanwhile he’s opening an enormous Izzi in Kuala Lumpur, and eyeing expansion throughout Indonesia.

“We’d like to do a deal with a larger company who has good contacts in Surabaya, who has good contacts in Bandung, who could take the brand national,” he says.

Eskapa says he hasn’t modified the pizza to make it taste more Indonesian.  He even offers a few vegetarian pies. Ask him what sells, though, and he replies without hesitation, “People tend to like the pizzas with meat. They like the meat, the meat, the meat.”

Eskapa took the long way around to becoming a pizza and pasta magnate. He grew up in London and Switzerland and went to school in the U.S. At age 24 he moved to Hong Kong.

“I was working in coal for a very large coal company in Hong Kong. And they were what I like to call ethically challenged,” he says. After two years he switched both his line of work and his location, heading to Jakarta to launch the internet company Satunet Group.

He says Jakarta was a welcome change.  “Hong Kong is not a friendly place. The taxi drivers wouldn’t even recognize that you’re in the taxi. They wouldn’t even acknowledge you.”  

After selling Satunet “at the top of the market”, Eskapa did a stretch as publisher of the Indonesian edition of Business Week. Then he got a craving for pizza.

Sipping what seems like a superfluous cup of coffee. Eskapa radiates energy, especially when talking about his business. He likes to quote figures, from the number of customers served per month (more than 90,000) to how often the air-conditioner gets bleached (every week, if you must know). 

As to how many hours he puts in: “It’s 24 hours a day because you’re constantly thinking. Last night I couldn’t sleep. These guys know,” he says, gesturing toward a senior staffer,  “they get emails from me at all times.”

The main challenge in the market right now, he says, is location.

“There’s no question there are too many malls open. Those malls need to rapidly adjust their price per square meter.” Furthermore, he adds, inexperienced people getting into the restaurant trade are diluting the market. He mentions a deli around the corner from his office.

“What drugs are these people on? You just wouldn’t open up a unit there. You just wouldn’t open up a unit in that road in that location. There’s very little parking and it’s a random place.”

But despite the hard-nosed business talk, Eskapa, who just married his longtime partner, clearly has a softer side. He raves about the artist Hanafi, whose paintings are an integral part of Izzi’s style.

“Hanafi is a great artist, he’s unbelievable,” he says. “He was a witness at our marriage, he’s a serious guy.”

Eskapa insists he will only have his picture taken next to one of his Hanafi paintings. He talks about his happiness at getting thank-you letters from customers.

“We’re not an arrogant company, right?” he says. “We just want to be the best at what we do. We want our people to enjoy what they do. That’s very important.

* * * *

Eddie Cordisco was a wanderer. Back home in Carson City, Nevada, he would work in restaurants or casinos for a year, save up his money, and then travel for a year. Eventually he wandered to Indonesia.

“I was working at a roadhouse in the middle of Australia and met an English kid, and he said he was traveling through Indonesia, and that sounded pretty interesting. So I ended up going through Indonesia, and loved it.”

Cordisco came back to Bali a couple of times and managed to find work. Then he moved to Jakarta with business partner Paul Counihan.  They launched the Russian-themed bar Red Square.  Then he opened Fast Eddie’s Pizza and subs in Kebayoran Baru, right across from Moestopo University.

Now his life is all about pizza.

“I know about the spices,” he says. “If  I say use this canned tomato, if you change it, it changes the whole complete taste. That’s why my recipes have specific brands, because I modify the taste to those. Because I really had to work a lot harder here on keeping a consistent taste, and getting the right taste.”

Fast Eddie’s looks like a college hangout in the U.S., from the cheesy logo featuring the babyfaced Eddie with a big smile and a chef’s toque, to the bright green-and-red decor.  It’s informal, to say the least. The pizza comes without plates, forks or knives, because that’s how Cordisco ate pizza as a kid.

“I never had ‘em growing up so I never knew you could have a plate,” he says with a laugh. “There are certain things I stick to.”

The restaurant’s casual look is deceptive. Every brightly-colored fixture represents a battle won.

“The contractor didn’t want to do it, the architect didn’t want to do it, everybody was like, you can’t have a green table, you can’t have that color red, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t.” It took persistence, but “by the end,” he says, “they were coming to me saying ‘I can get green railings’ or ‘we got red lights.’ So it became their own.”

Cordisco designed his pizzas in a similarly uncompromising style. He doesn’t want to change them too much to fit some conception of Indonesian tastes. Other than using beef products in place of pork, he sticks to American-style pizzas like Pepperoni and Hawaiian.

“I went with the basics,” he says. “I went back to pizza.” Still, if the place takes off and the menu expands, he won’t rule out adding something like the locally-beloved tuna pizza. He’s already taken some liberties with the sub sandwiches, offering rendang alongside the traditional Philly cheese steak and Italian meatball.

“There is no authentic food. There’s a hundred thousand nasi gorengs,” he says. “It’s about making food taste good, and value for money.”

It’s also about creating a welcoming environment. Cordisco feels young adults looking for a place to meet and socialize are increasingly coming here.

“It’s clean, it’s nice food, it’s just a better hangout than Blok M. That level of client had few places to go. They didn’t want be in a mall. And they like the food.”

Cordisco says running a pizza shop here is different than back in the U.S. – and not just because he enjoys the challenge of finding the perfect canned tomato. Here, he says, a restaurant can make a real difference by giving its employees opportunities to learn the business.

“In the states it was becoming more and more difficult because the more you help the unhappier they seemed to get, because the more they wanted,” he says. “It’s not the same feeling.

“This is a little bit of my giving back. Rather than Peace Corps or UNICEF I get to build places like this and teach these people. It’s a working school.”

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