Wow, so New Haven style pizza is really a thing? I was eating at a local pizza place and asked what style their pizza was and the guy was super serious and earnest when he said “East Coast, New Haven style”. And I was like “New England style?” (he had a thick accent) and he goes “No no no, New HAVEN style, Connecticut style pizza!”
I couldn’t tell much of a difference to be honest, but I swear Seattle has the shittiest selection of pizzas around, everything here is either Zeek’s (chain, which I actually kind of like) or thin cracker crust napoletana stuff.
I like napoletana style, but would really like some other options like NYC or Chicago style as well.
New Haven tries to flatter itself by claiming that their pizza is a distinct style, on par with Chicago, or New York style. As far as I can tell, it’s a minor variation on Neapolitan Pizza, the same branch that gave rise to New York pizza, with the main difference being the toppings.
I’m sure I’ll get all kinds of shit for saying that, though, from the New Haven Pizza Defense Force.
As for it being indistinguishable from New York style – they’re certainly similar, and I don’t have a large sample size of either to go on, but it seems to me that the crust is slightly different and the New Haven stuff is a lot more oriented toward white pizza and particularly seafood toppings.
In my experience, there’s as much crust variation between pizza places in NYC as there is between “typical” NYC pizza and New Haven pizza.
As for white / seafood toppings, that may get you a distinct name, like Hawaiian, or Supreme, but it doesn’t count as a wholly different “school” of pizza making, as it were.
New Haven also has a formidable Hamburger Defense Force. Apparently they serve the best damn burgers in creation there. Hell, they claim to be the birthplace of the hamburger.
What an interesting travel through Wikipedia this prompted for me.
Apparently the Library of Congress is going with their claim, since it seems to be the only one with verifiable documentation (there’s a notarized document from 1900 distinguishing between hamburger steaks and hamburger sandwiches, because the hamburger steak predates all of this crap by a considerable margin), but there are a couple of other quite plausible origin stories beside it.
I had several lobster rolls at a restaurant that claimed to have invented the lobster roll. They were damn tasty.
It’s a daycare center now.
Anyway, to bring it back to pizza, I need to get myself out to Chicago so I can try some actual, authentic Chicago-style pizza (or, as I imagine they call it there, pizza). New York pizza is pretty darn good.
Alas, the best pizza joints I’ve ever been to in Vermont have both been gone for years.
Some friends once took me to some famous New Haven pizzeria claiming it was good and special. It wasn’t. Sorry I can’t remember which one it was, but it was worse than NYC average, which isn’t that good anymore.
It’s the antithesis of a chain, but if you swing back around Atlanta again you should make a special effort to hit Antico Pizza. It’s not far from Midtown and it’s absolutely worth it. The spicy Diaviola is to die for.
So, no this is out of nowhere, but I went to Little Caesars yesterday for convenience, and you know, I think it compares well to Domino’s and other national chains these days. It’s still cheap pizza, but I was pleasantly surprised.
It’s quite possible they’ve updated their recipes and are different or better now than before (note that this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s any good). I always laugh at that old news I recall where Chuck E Cheese announced they were switching to real cheese.
I also stopped in a Little Caesar to pick up pizzas for a youth group gathering. Thought it was meh, but I hadn’t been to one in ages. They’ve done some interesting things to cater to convenience, like the “alert five” cheese or pepperoni pizzas that are basically already cooked. Not sure the heating bin concept works for pizza as well as it does burgers but I could at least see the evil corporate sensibility at work: our pizza isn’t great and our focus on costs ensures it never will be, so let’s try something else. If you aren’t picky and need a basic pizza fast…
Yeah, it’s not amazing pizza or anything but it’s perfectly edible, I like it better than your run of the mill <$5 frozen pizza, and so it makes a good pizza for, say, large parties or a quick fix dinner option.
Dominoes is still pretty tough to be beat for decent quality at a bargain price, especially if you have one close by and can pick up so you avoid delivery charges and tip.
I’m probably due for some next weekend when my girlfriend and her daughter go on vacation.
+1 to this. Dominos was TERRIBLE pizza back in the dark ages when I was in college. But they’ve really improved and are now perfectly edible as far as generic delivery pizza goes.
I’d add the caveat that it’s often going to depend on your own local Domino’s franchise, really. The one near us that we frequently use is pretty hit or miss, presumably based on who is making the pizza on any given night. In any case, sometimes the pizza is really good. Other times it’s absolutely horrendous. I can’t believe two identical pizza orders from the same place can be so wildly different in quality.
That said, we have other pizza places that are our go-to’s if we want to guarantee a quality pizza… but they’re definitely more expensive (Pagliacci Pizza and Zeek’s Pizza). We use Domino’s when we feel like cheap pizza and are willing to roll the dice on quality that particular night. ;)
We used to slip out for lunch some days to Little Caesars while we were teacher’s aides during our senior year in high school and when they were freshly made to order and we ate them there at the restaurant, they were really good. All we would get was pepperoni on it, too.
This was back in '85, though, so maybe they made them different then. They were probably a lot more unhealthy back then.
We used to refer to them as Papa Nastys for the exact same reason.
I’ve been hit or miss with most of the big pizza chains. You never get the best pizza from any of them. The best you can hope for is an okay pizza, sometimes delivered to your door in a decent amount of time. Unless I’m having a ton of people over and need something like that, I’d much rather take the time to go to one of the better local pizza places and bring it home if I’m dead set to eat it at the dinner table.
I found that the Pizza Hut near me doesn’t know how to use their ingredients. I do carry-out only, and at one point I was told they were having issues with the spinach and I could either wait while they remade the pizza or they could give me the ingredients to add on my own; I took the ingredients. Never had any issues with the local Papa Johns.
As noted above, chains make decent pizzas, but I pretty much never get a GREAT pizza from any of them. When I go to local shops, the variability is higher in terms of quality, in both directions.
