- You try to explain this pizza to somebody that's not from the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, it's very difficult.

This isn't New York pizza.

This isn't Chicago Pizza.

This is not old forge pizza.

So how do you describe Sabatini's pizza?

It's a Sabatini's pizza.

(upbeat music) - It has like a crispy crust to it.

The sauce is a little bit sweet.

- [Lindo] We use eight 10 gallons of pickles a week, just on pizza alone.

- To me, I'm always an extra sauce guy.

It's a taste you don't get anywhere else.

- The last time I was here, I bought a pizza.

I was going to visit a girlfriend.

And by the time I got to her house in Wilkes-Barre, I had eaten the whole thing.

(laughs) (upbeat music) - Sabatini's Pizza started in 1958.

It was opened by my grandparents.

Same location.

It was a little smaller then.

(upbeat music) All right, a lot smaller then.

(laughs) And we tried to keep everything exactly how it was.

And on into the kitchen.

First thing you need is dough.

(bright upbeat music) - I make probably a ton of dough a week.

2,000 pounds of flour.

- My grandparents, they believed that the cheese and the sauce was the part that you wanna eat.

So we do put our cheese down first, and it melts into the crust.

So some people might wanna call this upside-down pizza.

To me, it's normal.

They're upside down.

We're normal.

(pizza shovel scraping) I had a lady, fantastic customer, and then she found out she was a celiac.

The slightest bit of flour can make somebody very sick.

(upbeat music) I'm a pizza guy, you know, I'm not worried about flour.

I live in flour.

But it's extremely important to make sure that there's no cross-contamination.

- They can't be around flour.

So we had to separate it from the regular pizza site.

There's different screens and there's different cheese.

- We don't make the dough here for that.

That dough is made in a completely gluten-free facility that's offsite.

To me, it's as close as we can get to a Sabatini's pizza, and that's why we're proud to put our name on it.

And that's, it looks like a Sabatini's pizza still, 'cause it is.

It's just our gluten-free version.

(upbeat music) - So many people grow up and they leave.

They go away for college or jobs or whatnot, and then they come back, and this is always home for everyone to come back to.

- Memories.

Throwback.

Believe it or not, the last time I was here was actually in my high school years.

- Nobody wants the new and improved Sabatini's, they want the stuff they were eating when they were a kid.

They want the stuff they were eating when they were on their first date with their wife 37 years ago.

So I can't change that.

I'm not changing that.

- Our customer base, they like to take a little piece of us with them.

These glow in the dark actually.

A lot of us grew up with Play Plaza, then it turned into one of the greatest beer bars in Pennsylvania.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the bottle shop.

(upbeat music) You get a nice cold beer with a nice hot piece of pizza.

It's, "Oh yeah!"

It's just fantastic.

- Honestly, we come here for the beer because their beer is amazing.

- Yes.

- However, if they didn't have good food, we probably wouldn't be here nearly as often as we are.

(upbeat music) - For me, you know, what good is a recipe, what good is a business if nobody's gonna enjoy it?

People love Sabatini's.

They want it.

What really showed that is when we were shut down for 33 days during the pandemic, and then we opened back up.

- The volume when we reopened, we couldn't keep up.

- And we wouldn't be what we are now if it wasn't for the support from our local community.

So we do everything we can to support the community as much as we can.

We help out a lot of sports teams.

We help out with a lot of donations.

But that's not even it.

You ready?

- Yeah.

- We're gonna take our hands, now push the dough.

We've done field trips with kids and showed kids how to make pizza.

And their eyes light up, and they're like, "Wow, this is so cool."

(bright music) - Do you wanna to throw it up in the air?

- [Child] How did you do that?

- It's only pizza to me, but to these kids, it's their favorite food.

(bright music) When that kid falls in love with the restaurant, you know, it's important.

It makes memories and continues the tradition.

(upbeat music) Sabatini's is an iconic business in this area.

You know, Exeter has changed a lot over the years, but being an Exeter resident and an Exeter business, there's things like this that keep it the same.

(upbeat music)