24-Hour Pizza Party — Eating My Way Through New Haven's Pizza Scene And Declaring A Winner

When it comes to pizza capitals of the world, one tends to immediately think of New York City, Chicago, and the place where it originated from — Naples. One city that deserves a place among those titans is New Haven, Connecticut. This city has a rich tradition of pizza making dating back to the early 20th century, doling out deliciously chewy apizza (pronounced "ah-beetz"), which are thin tomato pies with crispy charred crusts. They've been forever enjoyed by locals, Yale students, and famous folks blowing into town like JFK, Frank Sinatra, Paul McCartney, and Steven Spielberg.

The population of New Haven is just north of half a million, and all those mouths currently have over 300 options to scratch that craving for pizza. While that seems a yeoman's task to figure out the best of that lot, Chowhound turned to Colin M. Caplan, historian, author, and food tour guide, whose fittingly titled company is called Taste of New Haven, to literally "order" us pies around town. Caplan has been at the forefront, championing New Haven's place in the (pizza) world, including the introduction of "The Pizza State" license plate for Connecticut. Caplan summed up what makes New Haven pizza so special when he proudly said, "The word apizza itself is proof of who we are — it's our dialect, our identity, and our delicious rebellion against the rest of the world's idea of pizza."

Caplan took us to six New Haven pizza joints in total, including one brand new addition, and after much chewing and reviewing, and sipping on a few Foxon Park fountain sodas, the truth can finally be told — which is the best of the best.

Recommendations are based on firsthand impressions of promotional materials and products provided by the manufacturer.

Bobbi's Pizza has a long way to go to earn any sort of iconic status in the New Haven pizza scene, as the vibrant paint job splashed on the inside walls still looks freshly painted after just opening in the fall of 2025. This more casual restaurant is located at the epicenter of The Shops At Yale, and is the brainchild of nearby Indian restaurant Sherkaan owner Ankit Chellani and partner Bryan Burke, whose mother's name was borrowed for the concept. Forget tomato pies, the name of the game here is an entirely foreign style of pizza — "Detroit-ish." Each of its pies is 8x10, baked on a steel peel tray, and employs the use of Wisconsin brick cheese over the usual mozzarella.

Four slices come in a pie order, and when one opens the funky soft lavender box, your eyes are gifted something extremely novel in these parts — slices that scale much higher than a few centimeters. The bread is like a fluffy focaccia, with a nice crusty bottom, and a thin layer of sauce and well done cheese on top. The strength of this pie lies in its caramelized edges, where the crispness reigns supreme.

While I've personally had better Detroit-style pizza in New York City, I'm not sure any of them are serving ones quite as bold and lusciously saucy as Bobbi's Butter Chicken. Co-owner Ankit Chellani explained, "During COVID, we started making our own 'butter chicken pizza' as a special—it became a hit, so we opened Bobbi's to focus on it." This is a welcome addition to the New Haven scene, and one day may earn its stripes as a renowned local institution.

As you turn off Olive Street onto Wooster, the first pizza spot you'll see people lining up for is one of the neighborhood's holy trinity — Sally's Apizza. Salvatore "Sally" Consiglio was the nephew and employee of pizza maven Frank Pepe, and in 1938 took over an existing spot to open his own place, which still stands today and has expanded beyond New Haven since 2021.

When it comes to scenery and atmosphere, Sally's has it in spades, with well-worn booths hugging wood-paneled walls adorned with portraits of fans such as Frank Sinatra, JFK, and the Clintons. It has a true old-school feel, as if you walked into Arnold's Drive-In on "Happy Days." The original Middleby oven is the heart of the restaurant, where pizzas bake for 5–7 minutes for the 60 seats, where eaters are happy to wait.

While I was in love with Sally's physical surroundings, I was sadly underwhelmed with its standard tomato and cheese pies. While these slices looked the part, with its saucy, deep red, body, and charcoaled crust, the taste of the regular pie just didn't taste special. Most cities would kill for pies like this, but perhaps the one that Sally's served up today was having an off day. My main gripe was that the sauce was on more of the sweet side, and didn't give the pizza the bite it needed. Thankfully, my visit ended on a high note by indulging in the Potato & Rosemary white pie, which is accented with mozzarella, onion, and parmesan. This had all the flavor the regular pizza lacked, and I'd recommend this be the pie to try should you enter this building's beautiful interior.

On Crown Street lies one of the oldest establishments to serve hamburger sandwiches in America since 1895 — Louis' Lunch. Right across the street, there is another destination that opened as a brew and dance club in 1991, and four years later started serving pizza – BAR (yes, in ALL CAPS).

I ordered tomato pie with mozzarella, and the other half the "Taste of New Haven," with ricotta, roasted red peppers, Lamberti sausage, basil, and garlic. The other pie was half plain white, half mashed potato with bacon. Rolling solo, I ordered the smallest pies they offered, and the generous size of them could have fed a large family. With a slightly oblong shape, the super thin slices were somewhat rectangular nature.

The only knock about the slices is that the bottom crust was very flimsy, but was finished off at the top with a fantastically flaky crust. Alas, all the action going on above the soft belly made up for that slight. The plain mozzarella was an instant winner, with its wonderful sauce nicely complimenting the cheese. While the other half was loaded with tasty toppings, and in particular the house roasted red peppers, the plain was so great that it doesn't really need extra adornment. The plain side of the white pie was essentially a creamy garlic bread, which, as you could imagine, was a real treat . While I'm not a fan of mashed potatoes, that half did have a nice combination going on, where the bacon's savoriness and saltiness lent some smartness to the potato's whip. If you don't want to invest in a full pie, return when it becomes a nightclub and it sells pizza by the slice.

Steps from Yale's campus lies Yorkside Pizza & Restaurant, which opened in 1977 by the Greek brothers Koutroumanis as an extension of their previous pizza venture, and named for the street it resides on. Walking through its doors, you look around and instantly feel like you're at a destination for students, or for fans like Paul Giamatti and Stephen Colbert.

Although it has a wide-ranging menu, Greek-style pizza is still the draw at Yorkside's, where it utilizes a blend of four types of mozzarella, and ground, but never cooked plum tomatoes for sauce. Owner George Koutroumanis revealed to us, "Cooked sauce is for marinara, not pizza. Just grind, season with salt, pepper, garlic, oregano, olive oil." In lieu of the typical coal-fire ovens that the town is known for, Yorkside's pies are hand baked in pans, and after a round cooking in the pan, it is finished off directly on the hearth to add a crispness to the crust.

While I only had the pleasure of a singular slice at Yorkside, I was instantly smitten with its full flavor, from the saltiness of the gloriously gooey cheese, to the robustness of its juicy sauce, and its truly excellent crust. That crust, like Bobbi's, was also very focaccia-soft in the middle, but its thick and golden bottom had a firmness that kept this fantastic slice all together. This pizza actually conjured up childhood food memories, where I was raised on Greek-style pies at my beloved long lost spot La Pizzeria, in Rockville, Maryland. That one slice was both telling and filling, but now I regret not ordering a whole pie to bring back home with me to create new food memories with.

One of the first billboards you'll see welcoming you to New Haven is that of Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana, featuring the namesake pizzaiolo maestro with his ever-smiling face. Without Frank Pepe no one would be even talking or gobbling up New Haven apizza today. When the Italian immigrant arrived in these parts, he turned his baking acumen into a pizza making skill, starting in 1925, and set the standard for all pizza places in the area to follow over the next 100 years. Two buildings on Wooster Street, including the original location — "The Spot," serve the pies the same way Pepe did, and the tradition is still carried on today by his family, which has expanded Frank's good name to 17 total locations.

While I once tried Pepe's famous clam pizza, on this visit, Colin and I stuck to the basics, and some of his personal favorites. We had a tomato pie with garlic and half "mootz", and the other a white one with half broccoli and onion, and the other a Caprese-style one with pesto.

The smell emanating from these pies was one of the best pizza aromas one may ever smell. A bite of them confirms their awesomeness, with a lovely salted sauce, and a healthy sprinkling of grated Pecorino Romano topping it. I'm not a giant broccoli person, but the cut up pieces combined with the onions made for a dynamic duo. I've been to Frank Pepe's before, and have always found its pizzas to be consistent and all around fantastic. They have set the standard and are still maintaining it. Somewhere Frank is still smiling about what gift he gave New Haven and the world.

In the East Rock area of New Haven, a spot once called Tony's Apizza eventually turned into Modern Apizza, which has been this neighborhood's staple since 1934. The Nuzzo family was long its shepherds, and today, Billy Pustari has been the steward of this venerable New Haven destination. Modern Apizza has never expanded, and with the attention solely focused on the original location, quality has never been sacrificed. That's probably the reason Steven Spielberg once rounded up pies from here and had them flown to Hollywood to feed his cast and crew.

Approaching Modern on State Street from the south east, one encounters a giant iron sculpture of a pizza slice standing tall. It's a giant statement that is easily backed up once you enter this apizza place's doors. Like Sally's, Modern has a warm, worn-in look and feel to it, with wood paneling, and a back room decorated with a hand-drawn menu, listing many of its "muzzarelli" offerings. For our meal here, we truly stuck to the basics, with a single pie, half tomato, and the other with "mootz."

No pie arrived at our table more steamy hot than the one from Modern. One must let these settle, as to not burn your gums, but it also allows time to ogle at its charred-handsomeness. Tomato pies are the bread and butter of New Haven-style pizza, and from what I tasted, Modern had the single best version of them all. It had far more grated pecorino romano sprinkled on top than the others, and with a savory sauce, and a beautifully well-done finish, it added up to a masterpiece worthy of hanging up in Florence's Uffizi Galleries. The other half with mozzarella was also mighty delicious, but Modern's tomato pie is such a colossal winner, it should be declared the mayor of this true pizza capital.

In the fall of 2025, I traveled to New Haven, Connecticut to conduct this pizza taste test. Six places were visited in this taste test, over a 24-hour period, in the following order: BAR, Sally's Apizza, Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana, Modern Apizza, Yorkside Pizza & Restaurant, and Bobbi's Pizza. Colin M. Caplan picked all the places, and would have also taken me to Zeneli Pizzeria e Cucina Napoletana, but it was closed on the day of our visit.

The focus of the article was not the restaurant itself as a whole, but solely on the strengths of the pizza it serves. At BAR, I sought the advice of a waitress to help me complete my perfect order. With Caplan as my expert guide, with minimal input from myself, I let him choose the type of pies we'd try at each of the five other restaurants. Tomato and cheese pies were the focus, with specialty pizzas also sampled. The pizzas were sampled on site with multiple rounds of tastings.

The ultimate criteria for determining the final ranking of these pizza spots were based on flavor, aroma, texture, size, temperature, crust strength, robustness of the sauce, well-doneness, incorporation of toppings, uniqueness, and overall deliciousness of the pizza. This was ultimately a tough call, as all the places are worth visiting, but in the end, Modern Apizza edged out fellow New Haveners as the best of the bunch. You too can try this taste test yourself, and I highly recommend you let Colin and his Taste of New Haven food tour company be your guides.