Not all of Twitter is endless arguing over politics, there’s also pizza wars every week or so.
Ok, the NY v Chicago style debate has been done to death, but man this New Haven style has fervent defenders that are ready to fight to the death over it.
Why? I’ve never even been to Connecticut and all I think about is Yale University when I think New Haven. I can’t imagine a bunch of nerds making good pizza.
So, enlighten me.
It’s a brick oven pizza. Maybe it’s good someplace. Style doesn’t make pizza.
My brother raves about pizza he gets in Southfield, Michigan (a 90 minute drive he says is worth it).
The place is eclectic. Jerusalem Pizza is a Jewish pizza place, and their food is prepared “under the supervision of the Council of Orthodox Rabbis of Greater Detroit” (at least that’s what it says on the box).
As a born and raised New Englander, I can honestly say without malice that Connecticut is by far the least attractive of all the New England states, and New Haven is just plain icky. Sorry, it had to be said. With that being the case, I guess it is psychologically important to them to have some claim to fame, be it real or imagined.
As a Chicagoan who has had her share of New York pizza as well, and with that being the case, my derisive laughter is tinged with a hint of pity.
I ate plenty of it while I lived there but I’m honestly not sure I could pick it out in a blind test (as long as you didn’t cheat and put clams on it.)
I don’t have a style I hold above others. Although there are some I don’t like (e.g. rural midwest thin circle cut into little squares.)
It’s not the college nerds making the pizza, for the most part. The oldest establishment is Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana. The founder was an immigrant from Italy who founded it in 1925. Thirteen years later, his sister and nephew founded Sally’s.
As to whether it’s good, take a look, for instance, at this rundown of the 101 best pizzas in America, from The Daily Meal website. Pepe’s is number one, Sally’s, number nine, Modern Apizza is at 16, BAR is 47, Colony Grill in Stamford is 43 and Zuppardi’s in West Haven is 45. So that’s four pizzerias in New Haven, one in the suburb right next door and another in Stamford not far away. (Plus Roseland Apizza in Derby is often on such lists.)
So, yes, it’s good and it’s recognized as being good.
So the factual answer is that New Haven-style pizza is made in a very hot brick oven (traditionally coal-fired). So the bottom is well-done, to the point of charred spots, without turning the whole thing into a completely dry cracker or burning the toppings.
If you don’t like the well-done, hint of char, taste, then you won’t think New Haven-style is so great. But if you do (I do!) then you will.
I had one like that in Ketichikan Alaska years ago. It was amazing.
And at Pepe’s, that brick oven is really big. I think it’s ten feet deep, so the pizza peel (the wooden board used to move the pizza in and out of the oven) has a handle eight or ten feet long. It’s actually entertaining watching the cooks manipulate the pizzas deep in the oven. And Pepe’s is now a chain, owned by the grandchildren of Frank Pepe. They have restaurants elsewhere in Connecticut, Yonkers, Rhode Island, a couple in Massachusetts and I think were building one in the Washington DC area. Sally’s is just down the street from the original Pepe’s and Sally’s was a very small restaurant, so you had to stand in line for upwards of an hour to get pizza, even to go. You could try calling ahead for takeout but the number was always busy. So when you get to the front of the line, you’d notice that the phone attached to the public number was always off the hook. There was another phone but the number attached to that was the biggest secret in New Haven (bigger than the location of Geronimo’s skull). You had to be a real New Haven insider to get that number.
And New Haven-style pizza (or apizza in the dialect of the Italian-Americans of the area) is a known distinct style of pizza available throughout the country.
That’s the style I crave for and can’t get! Little crunchy squares is the. Best.
Maybe I haven’t tried the right tavern style places in Chicago but if I’m going to get cut into square pizza I’d much rather go to Ohio for Donatos. Maybe that’s just nostalgia