I've shared my opinion on pizza toppings here already but the real question is, what does resident tasting expert and Serious Eats Puppy-At-Large Hambone like on his pies?
Though New York may lay claim as the cradle of pizza in America, many people would say that New Haven has the best. Certainly, there are a higher ratio of good to bad pizzerias in the area than there are almost anywhere else in the world. The question is, who's got the best?
As with any road trip, the all-important matter of lunch came up first. Even before we started discussing it, I was pretty sure where Ed was going to lead us. See, both he and Connecticut Slice correspondent Amy Kundrat have waxed poetic about what is supposedly the "best clam pizza on the planet" (according to Ed). As a kid who pretty much grew up eating clam pizzas in New Haven and beyond, this, I had to taste.
From Sally's Apizza [Photograph: Adam Kuban] The New Haven Pizza Fest got underway last Thursday and Friday. While sadly two days are behind us, the good news is that the second half of the festival is this Thursday and Friday from 12-1:30 pm on the New Haven Green (map). If you can get there, why wouldn't you?! The festival is a fundraiser for The Connection Fund. They have had 483 pizzas donated from 28 area pizzerias, including their sponsors Modern Apizza, Abate, Tolli's, P&M, Born in America, and Marco Pizzeria. Slices are going for 3 bucks each or 2...
A slice of New Haven's Wooster Street arrived in Danbury, Connecticut last week in the form of a new outpost of Frank Pepe's Pizzeria Napoletana. Just to make absolutely sure this was not a wintertime mirage, I headed over to the new Danbury branch during a recent snow day.
According to the staff, the original pizza cook at Bar once worked at Sally's on Wooster Street, and at first glance, the pedigree is apparent: the pizzas are served over a sheet of parchment paper set into aluminum sheet trays, shaped into elongated circles to better fit the rectangular pan. There are differences, too, though—the pizzas are substantially thinner than other New Haven pies, and they are sliced into rectangles rather than the usual wedges.
A few friends of Slice visited New Haven, Connecticut, recently (both independent of one another) and loaded up on pizza at some of the city's most celebrated pizzerias. First up on Sunday was pizza photographer Hong-An Tran (who we interviewed here a couple weeks ago). She and a couple of friends hit up Bar, Frank Pepe's, Modern, and Sally's in that order. Only at Sally's were they blown away, it seems.
If you are only a casual pizza fan, you'd be excused for underestimating Connecticut's contributions to the slice-o-sphere. After all, isn't it NYC and Chicago that get all the attention from TV shows and food writers too lazy to go beyond the tired Big Apple–Windy City rivalry? In fact, parts of Connecticut have had world-class pizza operations for upwards of 85 years. That's not to mention all the relative newcomers (emphasis on relative) that have opened in the nearly nine decades of Nutmeg State pizza ascendancy. Let's take a look at some of the options for those unfamiliar with the state's crusty, cheesy, saucy offerings.
When we just couldn't eat any more, I told one of the guys behind the counter that the clam pie was amazing because it appeared to be made from freshly shucked clams. His reply: "I hope it tastes like freshly shucked clams because that's exactly what was on the pizza. Why do you think it took so long for your clam pie? We shucked every one of the clams after you ordered your pizza."
Serious Eats–Slice overlord Ed Levine here has been on my case about getting to the new Frank Pepe's in Yonkers for a while now. He wanted to see how it stacked up to the original in New Haven, Connecticut. See, the Frank Pepe family has been on a small tear in the last few years, opening branches of the famed New Haven pizzeria throughout Connecticut—first in Fairfield, then Manchester, then at the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville. Then they opened one in Yonkers, New York. This was sort of a big deal in pizza circles, since there's a fair amount...
