Every region claims bragging rights over the best pizza in the nation. Sorry, Chicago, it is not you. Anything I have to wait 50 minutes for and eat with a fork and knife is not pizza. It is a greasy glob of congestive heart failure.
New Haven-style apizza originated at Frank Pepe’s Pizzaria in the Wooster Square neighborhood of New Haven in 1925. Closely related to a Neapolitan pizza, New Haven’s version is a thin, slightly acidic crust, topped with nothing more than homemade tomato sauce and pecorino romano cheese, served slightly burnt. To the novice, the blackened crust is cause for complaint. To pizza connoisseurs, New Haven-style apizza (by the way, they call it apizza, and not just pizza, due to its differences from the standard pie) is a challenging delight for the senses, mixing sour crust with creamy cheese and salty toppings.
Modern Apizza is a standard-looking pizzeria, with quintessential wooden booths and amber-tinted plastic cups. In the kitchen, a scorching, gas-fueled kiln is spitting out gourmet pies with an array of toppings — clams casino with bacon and peppers, garden fresh eggplant, and the slightly terrifying sounding Italian Bomb, plastered with bacon, sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, onion, peppers, and garlic.
We picked New Haven’s signature pie, a white pizza topped with littleneck clams. The pizza, sauced with a simple combination of olive oil and garlic, accompanied by lemon wedges, seemed like something you might get at a seafood restaurant rather than a pizzeria. The charred edges of the pizza add an extra dimension of flavor, juxtaposed against a tart crust that is remarkably soft inside. Its pleasantly bitter flavor is perfect for seafood toppings, especially when sprinkled with lemon juice. We also sampled the crabmeat pie, served similarly to the white clam version, only with nuggets of fresh, salty crab instead.
The pizza wars will probably never end, with each segment of the country claiming to have the best. (Since I’m on a roll here, it is also not you, St. Louis. Provel cheese tastes like Chef Boyardee-flavored vomit.) With New Haven-style apizza being such a localized specialty, it may never get the widespread acclaim of its cousin from just across the Long Island Sound, with “Brooklyn style” pizza joints seemingly everywhere. In some ways, it is hard to imagine intentionally burnt crust becoming a thing in the land of casseroles and cookouts, but for our money, New Haven apizza deserves more than just honorable mention. It certainly beats the hell out of California-style pizza, where things that previously belonged nowhere near pizza are now considered legit toppings.
Ok, regional pot shots aside, New Haven-style apizza, and specifically Modern Apizza, is a one-of-a-kind pizza experience that combines fresh ingredients with a unique crust. In our broad culinary adventures, it ranks as a dish that takes other pies down a peg, and one we think the entire country should have a piece of.
No comments:
Post a Comment