The search for New Haven’s pizza moment

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New Haveners and Yale graduates judge each other with a handshake and a single question: What’s your favorite pizza place?

The answer can say a lot about a person.

A traditionalist could go first Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletanathe old pizza queen of New Haven, Conn. A no-nonsense straight-shooter chooses Sally’s Pizza, the other staple on Wooster Street, in the heart of New Haven’s Little Italy. A quiet local can choose Modern Apizzaa relative newcomer to the pantheon.

But those are just the Big Three, so famous that they often appear together: pepessallysmodern, in a word. There are other greats. Slice lovers are getting all excited Ernie’s. Mussel lovers praise Zuppardi’s, one town away. The rickety crowd cheers Bar, known for its mashed potato and bacon pie. And people at the farmers market love it Next-doornext to the main road.

In short: this city takes pizza seriously.

But in recent years, New Haven’s pizza scene has changed. I noticed it right away when I moved there in August to cover Connecticut for The New York Times. It had been five years since I last lived there, when I was a student at Yale.

Something has changed in that time. The lines seemed longer. The hype felt bigger. Even the Big Three seemed bigger. So after a few weeks of working, I started researching the service. My article on the city’s pizza scene, published last week, is an attempt to explain what many people see as a transitional moment for the city.

In September, I took a pizza tour led by Colin Caplan, one of the city’s leading pizza evangelists. (He seemed happy that a Times journalist was passing by.)

“Is this someone’s first time eating New Haven-style pizza?” he asked the dozens of hungry guests on the tour as they waited for Pepe’s — the first pies of the day.

No, they said.

“Anyone here for the first time at Pepe’s?” Not again.

‘Everyone is here for the first time New Haven Pepes?”

Finally he got some nods. And then I realized what the story was.

The pizza itself had not changed: many recipes are generations old and continue to exist. The tourists, who have long been lunching in this city, were not nestled in the bend of I-91 and I-95. It’s not even the signature mussels. They are still freshly peeled onto pies throughout the city and then served salty and chewy to pizza lovers who know their stuff.

Now New Haven pizza – once found only in New Haven – is available nationwide as Pepe’s and Sally’s expand, and as other New Haven-style stores open in other cities. And in New Haven itself it is increasingly becoming a commodity. There is pizza merchandise, pizza classes and pizza tours. It becomes a tourist thing, more than ever before. Some are delighted: shouldn’t the city’s cuisine be something to celebrate?

But there are also critics.

They are the die-hards and worry that if New Haven-style pizza is everywhere, tourists might not come to try the original pizzas. Moreover, they told me, other cities that try to trademark their culture end up with tacky, stale monuments to their once unique regionalism.

And some smaller pizzeria owners fear they will be pushed out by the expansions.

For now, New Haven still has its pizza diversity. And Mr. Caplan’s tour is meant to show that off. After passing through Italian-American New Haven, he took us to Stop 2: Bar, right in the heart of downtown.

Bar is loved, at least for me. In my senior year, my friends and I organized a graduation party there for our parents. During the tour I was given a beer that tasted like blueberry pie. (I don’t want to hear about it. It was good.)

Mr. Caplan then led our group through the Yale campus toward Modern. I gave in and unbuttoned my jeans. At Sally’s, our last stop, all I could do was politely snack.

Mr. Caplan ended the tour by asking for a vote. We had tried four of the big ones. Now we had to make some hard decisions.

My colleagues chose Sally’s as best overall. Was that a recency bias? True excellence? The servers hovering nearby while everyone casts their votes?

Who knows. For now, I’ll keep my favorite to myself – at least in print.

But I have to admit that I’m open to the extensions. I will always love the Pepe’s branch in Yonkers, NY, where I went for dinner the night I found out I was accepted into Yale and cried tears of joy right through my tomato pie.

But there really is something about going to the source.

Maybe it’s the way a hot, charred piece of meat tastes on the dreary days that stretch from October to April in New Haven. Maybe it’s the lines – or the families in those lines. Maybe it really is the mussels.

So the next time you go through the “largest small city in America‘, Drive off the highway and have a bite to eat. I promise you’ll understand the hype.