Can New Haven’s legendary pizza restaurants play on the national stage?
For generations, New Haven has been a pizzeria.
The pies are distinctive: more of a meal than the greasy, foldable New York slices, more blue-collar than baroque Californian concoctions. They’re a kind of American Neapolitan: chewy, charred and fresh, but with quirkier toppings than you might find on a traditional pie in Naples.
The culture is also unique. Connecticut residents and Yale University graduates alike have strong opinions about which pizzeria is the best. The lines stretch every weekend Woosterstraat and through Wooster Square, as local families and tourists line up for lunch.
But in recent years things have started to change. Suddenly it seems like everyone wants to cash in on the popularity of the city’s signature dish.
“I’ve been promoting New Haven pizza for years and literally pushing it into people’s mouths,” says Colin M. Caplan, New Haven’s unofficial pizza historian. wrote a book about the city’s pizza.
“This year,” he added, “it’s just gone crazy.”
“New Haven-style pizza set the standard for pizza,” Ricky Consiglio, whose father founded Sally’s, wrote in an email.
Mr Consiglio – who, together with his brother, sold the family business in 2017 – was initially skeptical about Sally’s success. But he said it works. And it has become a pioneer in what he called the “New Haven pizza movement.”
The growth and hype also have their critics. They say New Haven has something special, something specific. They fear that the expansion will take away the family feeling from companies that were once completely family-owned.
They wonder if pizza tourism could turn the city into something like an Italian-American exhibit at Epcot. And they think New Haven-style pizza sold elsewhere will inevitably lose something in translation.
“Describe the Sistine Chapel to me,” said Jim Ormrod, 38, whose great-grandfather started Zuppardi’s Apizza, which is best known for its mussel pie. ‘You can’t. You have to go there.”
Technically, pizza isn’t a dish that people in New Haven and beyond love. It’s ‘apizza’, pronounced ‘ah-beetz’. This comes straight from Naples: the recipes and the name in dialect came with immigrants from the 19th century.
New Haven has many pizzerias. But the best known is Pepe’s, founded in 1925; Sally’s, which dates back to 1938; And Modern Apizzafounded in 1944 and in the same family since 1988, are known as the Big Three.
The city’s pizza tradition is built around three traditional varieties, although many places are now experimenting with more toppings.
Firstly, there is the mussel pizza, where the mussels are often freshly peeled to order on a white cake. Then there’s “tomato pie,” made with Pecorino Romano instead of mozzarella. Finally, there is the classic tomato and mozzarella pie. Pizza lovers passionately defend their favorite.
“Pizza is the only food that suits us,” Mr. Caplan noted. “It is also one of the foods that sets us apart. And we become passionate.”
Only from the Big Three Modern has resisted every urge to expand. Bill Pustari, 60, the owner, allows only three other people to operate the ovens. He’s there almost every day. He personally chooses his own tomatoes from local farms for specialty pies. He is vigilant, even obsessive.
“The only way we can stay this busy is consistency,” he says.
The pizza’s popularity has spread mainly through word of mouth, but has also been boosted by David Portnoy, the irascible founder of Barstool Sports – known for his influential online pizza reviews as well as a history of misogynistic and racist comments – who often goes to New Haven is calling. “the pizza capital of the world.”
“He definitely helped put New Haven on the map,” said Frank Zabski, 55, the hotel’s owner. Pizza School New Havenwhere pizza making lessons are given.
Mr. Zabski takes his students through the life cycle of New Haven-style pizza, from dough to oven to plate. It’s part pizza party, part history lesson. He explains the nuances – the charred base, the unusual toppings – as he enthusiastically walks around the kitchen.
“One of my personal goals is to bring New Haven-style pizza to the rest of the world,” he said.
Mr. Caplan is another pizza evangelist from New Haven.
He claims the city did that one of the best regional dishes in the country. Put New Haven pizza up there with New York bagels, Philadelphia cheesesteaks or Nashville hot chicken. It’s also a point of state pride: Pizza is a highlight of Connecticut’s efforts to rebrand itself as young and hip.
As Mr. Caplan spoke, some on his tour wondered what the impact of the current boom would be. If you took this pie from New Haven, they asked each other: Would it still be New Haven pizza?
Hilary Dickau, 37, noted that she once worked at Mohegan Sun, the casino and resort in Uncasville, Conn., where Pepe’s has an outpost. The atmosphere there, she lamented, was not as good as in New Haven.
“The original Frank Pepe’s are different than the Frank Pepe’s at Mohegan,” she said. At Mohegan, “it always felt so busy and rushed.”
Joe Coviello, 44, said he was all for business expansion. “It’s good to reach the masses,” he said. Yet he is a traditional boy. “Like New Haven pizza? There is something to be said for coming to the original.”
In Pizzaholicsa vibrant Facebook group of pizza fanatics, some critics are equally devoted to the original version, in the original city.
“That’s not Ahbeetz,” one woman insisted, about a New Haven-style spot near Albany, NY. “It’s a nice cake…but not New Haven.”
One man complained about the flood of imitators. “We’re going to ruin the New Haven style,” he said.
Jennifer Bimonte-Kelly, Frank Pepe’s granddaughter, emphasizes that such worry is unnecessary. For example, she says, Pepe’s cakes can be made anywhere that “maintains technique, tradition and artistry.”
In an email, she noted that members of her family still serve on the board, even though they no longer handle day-to-day operations. And, she said, they took the 2006 change of ownership — and Pepe’s subsequent expansions — very seriously. At each of their new locations, they reproduced the New Haven furnace, booths and signature green tin ceilings.
“Nothing other than an exact replica would do,” she said.
Still, some businesspeople serving New Haven’s pizza diaspora recognize their limitations.
Jimmy Fantin, owner Fantinis in Stuart, Florida, worked at Pepe’s as a teenager. He’s filled his pizzeria with New Haven paraphernalia: old photos of New Haven, a Yale banner, even an “apizza” definition.
But even he says nothing compares to a real slice of New Haven, made in New Haven, eaten in New Haven.
“Is anything ever better than the original?” said Mr. Fantin, 57. “As far as I know, no.”