Sally’s Apizza - When it comes to eating in New Haven pizza is the thing.
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I never knew it was really a thing. I mean, I’ve heard people talk about New Haven, CT as a place for good pizza, but then there are a lot of places where you can find a good pie. And New Haven is dangerously close to New York City — one of the most highly esteemed situses for a classic slice. So New Haven pizza, I assumed, is just an extension of that, right? Wrong.
I'm embarrassed to say that the wonder of pizza in New Haven is not a new phenomenon which came about sometime after my early sojourns through the food world. Truth is, New Haven pizza has been a “thing” since as early as 1925 with Frank Pepe pushing a cart around Wooster Square hawking his baked flat pies. From then the sort-of-Neapolitan-style pizza craze grew, into what today includes numerous outstanding pizza joints; several of national notoriety. It’s a veritable pizza war going on in New Haven, with clear lines of demarcation drawn between diners over the two most famous joints – including Ronald Reagan pronouncing Frank Pepe’s as his favorite and Frank Sinatra siding with Sally’s Apizza — the very place I happened to be sitting in at the moment of my New Haven apizza epiphany.
Sally’s Apizza is not your typical pretty-good pizza joint that happens to be made better. They don’t even call it “pizza”, but rather “apizza” (pronounced by New Haveners in the know as ah-beets). These are enormous pies, with a notably thin crust, severely burnt edges and a characteristically imperfect round shape. They are handmade in every sense of the word. After making the dough the master pizza guys in the back push, pat and stretch it into shapes that, while sort of resembling circular pizzas, take on a more oval appearance just so it fits on the prep counter. Then they sauce it, not with a ladle like you think but with their hands, spreading the sauce with squiggly finger tracks to capture the saucy/cheesy goodness and practically up to the edge so that every bite is perfect. Hand-grated cheese is tossed on the pie along with any other ingredients before slipping onto a long peel and into the fire.
And speaking of heat, these pies are cooked in a brick oven thirteen feet wide and ten feet deep and fired by coal, which is shoveled in regularly. Picture feeding the furnaces in a steel mill or dumping fuel into an iron rooster locomotive — same thing here. What this means is that the pies bake at 650 degrees F for maybe ten minutes. From there it’s straight to the table on full-sized sheet pans, steaming and cut into long triangular slices, no two of which are alike. The crust is thin with small bubbles of baked dough along the collar, the edges are charred black from the heat, and the cheese and toppings are sizzling. It doesn't matter what toppings you added, or even famously none at all — that first look at your freshly delivered pie will make you gasp.
Look, from a guy who once spent a year making pizza, let me be clear: the pizzas at Sally’s are a study in balance and imprecise perfection. The selections are varied but each one, no matter what is on it, seems to always have just the right amount of cheese without being a gooey oil slick, generous toppings without overloading and making it soggy, a perfect char on the crust for smokey flavor, and exactly the right amount of sauce — which is to say not too much. It’s cooked to exactly the right level of doneness without anyone making a big deal, and it’s treated with respect, with the crew stepping back to make space when it’s time to pull a pie from the fire. Cut in a way that looks haphazard, the pies at Sally’s are remarkable by any pizza standard and inarguably the best I’ve ever had.
Take, for example, the absolutely-must-try Pepperoni Pie. Seemingly simple, the pepperoni is sliced thick just a few feet away, so that it curls up under the fierce heat into little charred-edged cups filled with their own spicy elixir as they rest in the rich marinara. The sauce is fresh and robust, with a brightness of acid softened into deep, smooth gravy. The taste and mouthfeel of this most perfect of pies is crazy, and If you like pepperoni on pizza, this will make you want to bust out your own version of Tarantella and dance around the restaurant.
Of course, you can’t skip the legendary White Clam Pie which — except for that, ahem, little college in the center of town — is something New Haven is perhaps most famous for. I’m talking about fresh-shucked littleneck clams, cloves of chopped garlic, a fistful of oregano, glug of extra virgin olive oil and a touch of Mozzarella cheese. If you’ve not had this yet it’s hard to understand what a special combination it is. The taste is clammy without being fishy, cheesy without being cloying, and vegetal without being bushy. The clams sit, nestled like naked gems on a soft sea floor, oozing their own liquor which shines around the garlic, the light-handed cheese and browned edges of bulbous crust. It’s like some Yalie savant went nuts in the food lab and accidentally created a masterpiece worthy of its reputation.
And don’t dare miss the White Potato Pie, with mandolin-thin potatoes, rosemary and onions set into a delicate bed of cheese. Smokey, charred and savory, this pizza is a creation of simplistic beauty. The rosemary infiltrates your nostrils as you lift the long, thin slice to your mouth, the clean potato taste and earthy parmesan cheese fills the sauceless flavor voids and blends together on your palate to deliver a pizza sensation found in few other places on earth. It rocked me with its direct, exacting flavor, its texture of thin, crisp potato edges, and its bent of rosemary and onions, as it instantly ascended to my favorite pizza of all time.
It’s crazy to look around this place, from the bouncer outside managing the line stretching down the street, to the small and crowded inside (though there is a larger roof deck for warm weather). People are wedged into booths that are always completely filled with pizza and drinks. Sheet pans of giant pizza are too big to fit more than two on a table, which sounds like no big deal — who orders more than two pies at a pizza joint, anyway? But at Sally’s it seems like at least three pies adorn every table (we ordered five), each resting and balancing atop the others with people digging into all of them at the same time. You just can’t choose between the options — so you don’t. A side table of two petite women had three pies between them and were unapologetically eating them all. Groups of people crowded together as tables were pushed around to the accommodate six pies rotating around like spinning plates. Each newly-delivered pie looks more enticing, each smells better, and people peer around the room to see which ones are being rushed forward from the back of the house. And amidst the melee the waitstaff takes it all in stride, sliding pans and plates and bringing large flat boxes once everyone pushes back from their table and exhales. Because the pies at Sally’s Apizza are so good that just two or three are not enough and everyone leaves with a takeaway box for later.
Sally’s Apizza, 237 Wooster St, New Haven, CT
Clam pie image courtesy of Lawandfood.blogspot.com
