New York style thin crust pizza and Chicago deep dish style pizza are givens. Everyone has heard of them and most likely tasted some version of them whether it was actually in New York or Chicago or not.
Then there are the much lesser-known styles that maybe you’ve heard of maybe you haven’t but most likely have to be in that city or region to try them like Detroit style, St. Louis style (a beyond favorite of mine), and California style.
The one style that is so local that you’ll only be able to try it at a few pie places is right here in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Yonkers, and scattered in a few other states at Frank Pepe or Sally’s Apizza restaurants.
From Forbes Magazine to Food and Wine Magazine New Haven style pizza ranked as the best in the country for 2023. It’s suddenly sweeping the nation as the most talked about pies being dubbed as America’s best with many saying “step aside New York.”
New Haven owes its pizza reputation to the Italian immigrant population that settled there in the first half of the last century. Today’s style kicked off for real in 1925, when Italian immigrant Frank Pepe opened Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana.
Frank Pepe’s nephew Salvatore Consiglio then started Sally’s Apizza in 1938. ‘Apizza’ is the local Italian-American term synonymous with the New Haven pizza style. Modern Apizza started in the 1930s, too.
Well, world-renowned celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay has finally tried this thin, coal-fired pizza, oblong in shape, characteristically charred pie with a chewy texture, sweet and tangy tomato sauce and a little bit of grated pecorino Romano cheese.
He went to our iconic pizza pie culinary institutions of Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana and Sally’s Apizza.
Chef Ramsay is filming Hell’s Kitchen at the Foxwoods Resort Casino and word is it that he loves New Haven style. The Michelin-star chef opened his sixth Hell’s Kitchen at Foxwoods last summer and his own pizza place in Washington, D.C. last week.
Speaking of D.C., according to legendary Connecticut radio station Rock I-95, a state representative along with 100 Connecticut pizza makers, vets, legislators, and community leaders traveled to D.C. to enter a statement into the Congressional Record declaring New Haven the Pizza capital of the country and Connecticut the ‘Pizza State.’
