Offbeat Eats

With all the traveling I do, I occasionally find myself visiting one of my favorite restaurants, and realizing upon reviewing the extensive history of Offbeat Eats that despite thinking that I’ve reviewed a place, that I actually hadn’t written it up yet. A trip late last year to New Haven resulted in my brother and I meeting up for pizza at what’s always been the benchmark for pizza in our extended family: Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana. And I was shocked that somehow, over almost 18 years of reviews, that Pepe’s hadn’t yet gotten a review. Pizza, more than most any other common food I can think of, is a story of regional styles (before they restructured their content, Serious Eats had a really good guide on it, but a similar guide is still to be found over on Spruce Eats), and one of my overall favorite styles (much of this courtesy of Pizza Cognition theory, since it was the “pizza” I was raised with as a benchmark), “New Haven Style Pizza” remains my overall favorite pizza style. And for anyone around New Haven, or familiar with its “Apizza” style, it’s impossible to have a discussion of the style without an argument about which iconic place dominates. Most folks recognize the triad of New Haven pizza places at the top of the food chain: Frank Pepe’s, Sally’s Apizza (down the street), or on the other side of town, Modern Apizza (which I have reviewed), but if I’ve got the time, I still always gravitate towards Pepe’s. Admittedly, much of this is faith (I’ve still got extended family members with strong preferences, and a visit to Sally’s is an eyebrow-raiser), but when I think of “New Haven Pizza”, a slice of Pepe’s is exactly what I’m picturing in my mind. So after a call to my cousin, we all gathered at Pepe’s to catch up and enjoy our favorite pizza.