New Haven pizza rises from humble beginnings to superstardom

NEW HAVEN — Locals know what the world is catching on to: New Haven does great pizza.

“New Haven is the up and coming underdog of big pizza cities,” said New Haven historian Colin Caplan, who has written the first pizza history book on the subject. “Everyone knows New York, Chicago, Naples, Rome. They look at these cites and say these are probably big pizza cities. They look at New Haven and say, ‘Really? It’s known for pizza?’ These are not people we’re worried about. People who know pizza know New Haven.

New Haven’s reputation for pizza is comparable to Philadelphia’s for the cheesesteak, Miami’s for the Cubano sandwich and Texas for barbecue in general, he said. All these cites that are known for these different foods came with immigrants. Here, they were Italians.

“I think New Haven was known before pizza was ever popular that this was a place you could get good pizza,” he said. “As the world increased in its pizza consumption, and people were doing all kinds of crazy things with pizza and people could find any kind of pizza anywhere, people were able to say, ‘New Haven has better pizza than where I come from.’”

Those who visit the city often come for the pizza, hailing from Pennsylvania, Ohio, London and elsewhere, he said. News articles from the 1950s have even touted New Haven as a pizza destination. The signature Neapolitan pie known as “apizza” (pronounced ah-BEETS) has put the city on the food map of the world by adhering to tradition and simplicity.

“There’s this awe and wonder of how this pizza is so good,” Caplan said. “How did New Haven do this in such a great way?” Apizza’s origins can be traced to nearly 100 years ago on Wooster Street.

The original masters

Two restaurants are credited with establishing New Haven as a pizza city: Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana and Sally’s Apizza, each started by an Italian immigrant. Their stories are know in some form by the thousands of people who have eaten a slice of New Haven history.

Frank Pepe, born in Maiori on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, immigrated at 16 to the U.S. in 1909, getting his first job in a New Haven factory. He returned to Italy to fight in WWI, but came back to New Haven in 1920, newly wed to Filomena Volpi. Pepe worked at a macaroni factory on Wooster Street before opening his own bakery on the same street in New Haven’s “Little Italy” neighborhood. He baked his bread and delivered it to the community with a cart, but since Pepe was illiterate, he couldn’t keep track of the orders, so he opened a store where customers would come to him.

He and his wife began making a simple recipe from their country — pizza, known to them as “apizza” in their Neapolitan dialect. They started baking their signature pizza in 1925 with tomatoes, grated cheese, garlic, oregano and olive oil, offering a second type with anchovy. Click here to continue reading.