ORDER UP Just a sampling
of what you can find on
the menu of Fri Guyz.
wanted that business to be a
restaurant.
“Going back to when I was 12,
I wanted to open a restaurant,”
he says.
He attended William Paterson
University for a few years studying
history, but dropped out in favor of
Bergen Community College’s culi-
nary program. “I decided, You know
what, I need to take a shot at that
dream I had,” he says.
It was the right choice. Vita loved
learning the culinary techniques he
was mesmerized by when watch-
ing the Food Network as a kid. He
got an associate’s degree in culinary
arts from Bergen Community College
in 2010.
In July, 2013, he began scouting
for locations to open a restaurant that
specialized in crazy fry creations and
wings. An unabashed lover of fried
foods, Vita wanted to create a fast-
casual chicken and fries joint, which
he believed there was a market for in
Wayne. He also got advice to add a
variety of cheese steaks to the menu,
since Wayne residents had no other
local cheese steak joints to fulfill
their cravings.
Vita wound up looking at a space
in the Preakness Shopping Center
that used to be home to a restaurant
he wasn’t too fond of. “The last time
I went into that building the food
was terrible,” he laughs. “I thought,
I’m never coming here ever again.
Now I’m here every day.”
The day after Thanksgiving, 2013,
he opened his place. Vita planned to
peel, prepare and hand-cut the pota-
toes for his fries, but after
spending the night before with all
of his friends, painstakingly slicing
potatoes, he decided otherwise. The
eight large sacks of potatoes they
had cut up only lasted him a few
hours. He now orders his fries from
a distributor.
When an order of fries gets placed,
the un-fried potato sticks get dunked
in canola oil to crisp up. “Frying is
pretty easy,” says Vita. It’s post-deep-
fryer where the magic happens, when
he and his team lay on the season-
ings, cheeses and toppings to create
the desired dish.
“I don’t want to say I was ahead of
the fry trend, but fries have definitely
become more popular,” says Vita.
And thanks to Instagram, crazy fry
creations are a lot more visible. To
get new ideas for Fri Guyz, Vita likes
to scroll through Instagram to see
what other chefs are doing.
He gets his inspiration from visit-
ing other restaurants, too; one recent
fry dish that he made was topped
with carne asada, based on a similar
dish he ate while in Las Vegas.
To see what Vita has thought up
on any given week, stop on by. And
while you’re there, be sure to chat
with Vita as he whips up your meal.
“I want to know my customer,”
Vita says. “I say, ‘I’m going to make
your day a whole lot better.’” ■
WAYNE MAGAZINE MAY 2019
45