The Ernie's Special, a classic sausage and mushroom pie.

Something magical happens when you drive far enough up Whalley Avenue: the urban grind of New Haven disappears, and you enter Westville. Suddenly everything is quaint, and even the Chinese restaurants, laundromats, and countless other strip mall businesses develop a neighborhood feel. As Yale students, maybe we were just especially conscious of the fact that we were no longer in the “Yale bubble,” but the change seemed deeper than that.

Ernie’s, we realized, is the perfect neighborhood place you’ve never heard of: a restaurant that attracts few visitors from afar, and is instead content to serve wholesome food to the people who live nearby.

We arrived at Ernie’s on a Saturday night at the shockingly early hour of 5:30 PM. While we would have had to wait God knows how long for a table at Pepe’s, Sally’s, or Modern, here we walked into a mostly empty restaurant.

The emptiness, we hoped, had nothing to do with the pizza quality, which we expected would be great. In fact, a number of New Haveners believe that Ernie’s serves the best pizza in town. Consider the following review by Dave P from Yelp.com:

Is there even language GRAND enough for me to describe my love for Ernies. I grew up near New Haven and have always loved the downtown places, especially Modern, but Ernies is the best pizza in the area for my money. It has a sweet sauce, incredible Grande cheese and a slightly thick crust that is fantastic.

In addition, I’ve lived in New York and Brooklyn for years and still need to come home every month or two to stop in at the best pizza that anyone will ever have. Period.

Ernie's is more of a sit-down restaurant than many local pizzerias.

Thanks to reviews like this, we entered the restaurant with high hopes. We were initially impressed by the ambiance of the place: more so than any other NHPP-reviewed eatery, Ernie’s feels like a restaurant straight out of Little Italy, with mock stucco walls, wood panelling, fake poinsettias, and a giant, gleaming espresso machine. There are also quirky, homey details, like the license plate behind the counter airbrushed with Sesame Street’s Ernie, and a sign on the wall that reads “Unattended children will be given an espresso and a free puppy.”

When we were seated in our booth, we ordered a red pie with mozzarella and the Ernie’s Special, the same sausage- and mushroom-topped classic that seems to be the special of nearly half of New Haven’s traditional pizza places. Our waitress asked if we wanted salad, and we gave in, figuring it would be nice to start with something light and fresh. The salad, which came out immediately, was a generous bowl of not-especially-fresh iceberg lettuce topped with a few cucumber slices and some grape tomatoes. It was nothing special, but then again, like everyone else, we were here for the pizza.

A lackluster salad, with Ken's dressing on the side, was nonetheless satisfying.

And when the pizza arrived, it looked great. Graced with an appetizing sheen of oil, the mozzarella on the red pie was slightly browned, just enough to add an extra layer of flavor. The crust, though not charred, was a beautiful chestnut brown, and was thick enough on the edges that we were sure it would have real character.

Ernie's red pie with mozzarella, a gorgeous pizza if we've ever seen one.

The cheese on the pie was delicious, with that classic milky flavor that pizza enthusiasts love. There was not, however, much tomato sauce, and what there was didn’t have much flavor, leaving the pie lacking the robust tomato-y-ness found at places like BAR and Pepe’s. The crust, though it looked great, also failed to live up to our expectations. Puffy and crisp, it tasted floury, and had little of the chew we hope to find in the best New Haven-style pizza.

The Ernie's Special: sadly, one of the less memorable pizzas we have tasted.

Unfortunately, our experience went downhill from here. The Ernie’s Special likewise failed to meet our expectations, though perhaps this was simply because we had already tasted superior renditions of the same toppings at Roseland and Zuppardi’s, and not because this pizza was actually that bad. In particular, the sausage, rather than being juicy clumps of fresh-ground pork, came in the form of crumbly, grainy slices with a pungent off flavor that wasn’t quite masked by a generous amount of fennel seed. Similarly, the mushrooms didn’t seem fresh.

In sum, something was just off, and we would expect better from the signature pizza of any establishment. We ate less than half of the Ernie’s Special, and no one was excited about taking the leftovers. Still, our pizza-eating experience at Ernie’s wasn’t terrible, and we felt the pizza was perfectly appropriate for a neighborhood pizza joint. But ultimately, if you’re looking for a destination pizzeria, Ernie’s may not be the place for you.

We give Ernie’s Pizzeria a two-star rating on our five-star scale, signifying that while it is a perfectly decent pizza place, it is somewhat below-average when compared to New Haven’s top pizzerias.

Ernie’s Pizzeria

1279 Whalley Ave

New Haven, CT 06516

(203) 387-3362

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The Zuppardi's special, topped with mushrooms and their majestic homemade sausage.

I’m not going to lie: we were excited about Zuppardi’s.

Sometimes when you’re scoping out potential pizza place, the word on the street (or the internet, in our case) is so positive that you know you’re in for a great meal. As Roadfood.com reviewer Nick Perna puts it, “Zuppardi’s is at least as good as, if not better than, the big name apizza places in New Haven, without the long lines. Actually, I think it is the best in the state.” Add to that homemade sausage that Connecticut Magazine has dubbed the best in the state, and you can see why we suspected Zuppardi’s would be something special.

We arrived at Zuppardi’s at peak dinner time on a Saturday night, yet we were nonetheless able to grab one of a couple free tables. There were no Wooster Street crowds here—just a bunch of hungry West Haven locals looking extremely happy.

For Zuppardi's clientele of West Haven locals, Saturday night is pizza night.

Zuppardi’s has the decor of an old-school takeout joint, with a few homey touches. A drink cooler in the corner is topped with a large sign that says “Laugh, Love, Family,” and tacky but lovable Easter Bunny figurines were stationed by the counter. The obligatory panettone, left over from the holiday season, was stationed behind a cooler bearing an array of Libby’s Italian Ice. If you’re looking for an upscale restaurant, head elsewhere, but as far as we were concerned, Zuppardi’s was legit.

Once we were seated, Stephen and I began with the usual: a one-liter bottle of Foxon Park cream soda. Placing our orders, we selected a red pie with mozzarella and a Zuppardi’s special (sausage and mushrooms). After hearing so much about the sausage quality, there was no way we could pass it up. The Connecticut Magazine “Best of 2008″ article, beckoning from a nearby wall, reminded us of the sausage’s porky pedigree. When the pizzas arrived, we were wowed.

Red pie with mozzarella at Zuppardi's. Delicious.

Perhaps the best thing about the pies was the crust. Zuppardi’s crust was thin in the middle but crisp and chewy on the outside, with the kind of flavor and character that you usually find only in homemade bread. Folks looking for airy pizzas should head elsewhere. With a little bit of char (more on the sausage pizza) and periodic bubbles, this crust was an absolute delight. The red pie with mozzarella was straightforward but delicious: we didn’t want to stop eating it. Light on garlic, the pie had decent-quality cheese and was topped with flavorful homemade sauce. At NHPP, we’ve realized that it’s actually harder to make a solid red pie with plain mozzarella than it is to throw a mess of toppings on something and make it taste good, so we were impressed. But the sausage and mushroom pie was even better.

Studded with chunks of homemade sausage, the special pie was a showstopper.

Try and imagine how good Zuppardi’s sausage could be. Ok, it’s actually better than that. Sweet and juicy, the sausage on our special pie made us question whether we should ever order similar pies anywhere else. Not crumbly, grainy, or gristly like standard supermarket schlock, these pillows of porky goodness (not slices, but rather generous nubs) were packed with flavor. Lightly seasoned with fennel, they were absolutely wonderful. The only downside to the special pizza was the lackluster canned mushrooms that accompanied the pork. But when pizza is this good, small mishaps like that are quibbles indeed.

Our meal at Zuppardi’s was so good that we decided we would have to return in the future. It’s unclear whether the restaurant is better than the temples of Wooster Street, but here’s our opinion: it sure comes close, and it may even be better. Frankly, when you have pizza this tasty, the debate probably isn’t that important.

We give Zuppardi’s a four-star ranking on our five-star scale. It’s a great pizza restaurant, and if you go, be sure to order something with their homemade sausage.

Zuppardi’s Apizza

179 Union Avenue

West Haven, CT 06516

(203) 934-1949

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The red pie with mozzarella at Dayton Street Apizza.

Dayton Street Apizza lies just a few miles up Whalley Avenue from downtown New Haven, but it feels well off the beaten path. This restaurant is a true neighborhood place: an unpretentious takeout joint with just 14 seats, it is hardly a destination restaurant like New Haven’s Big Three, and most of its residents are Westville locals from just down the street.

We were surprised, then, that the New Haven Advocate said it had pies “to rival Wooster Street.” Reviewers from Roadfood.com were fans as well. As Chris Ayers and Amy Briesch put it,

Thin, chewy crust with fresh toppings arranged conservatively and baked to well-done perfection: this is the crux of good apizza, and Dayton Street follows the rules.

Hungry and expectant, we ventured to Dayton Street on a weeknight to see if these claims held up. Entering the restaurant’s cozy brick interior, we examined the menu, which was displayed above the main counter and takeout window and included options ranging from the pungent-sounding Cousin Artie (onions, garlic, and anchovies) to more typical specialties like Clams Casino, Margherita, and Hawaiian. (The restaurant also serves Italian specialties like pasta and subs.)

Unable to decide, we asked the woman at the counter what she would recommend. The white pie with chicken and broccoli, she told us, was one of their most popular pies, so we ordered one of those and a red pie with mozzarella.

A case of Foxon Park sodas completes the classic takeout joint interior.

Having ordered, we sat down and admired the surroundings. Dayton Street isn’t much of a full-service restaurant, but it has plenty of the neighborhood charm that comes with a true takeout joint. A large drink cooler was filled with a rainbow of Foxon Park sodas in flavors ranging from gassosa (Italian lemon-lime) to cherry to birch beer. A TV in the corner was playing Jeopardy, a clock on the wall was shaped like a pepperoni pizza, and jars of Bobo’s Pasta Sauce, homemade by the restaurant, were clustered on a shelf near the counter. Red, white, and green neon lights framed the large street-facing windows in front. As we waited for our pies, we selected a one-liter bottle of cream soda from the cooler. The woman behind the counter brought us plastic cups.

When the pizzas arrived, we dug in. Dayton Street pizzas are thin-crust, even by New Haven standards: thicker than the pies at BAR but thinner than heftier examples like those at Zuppardi’s.

Red pie with mozz at Dayton Street: not quite as tasty as it looks, but still decent.

The crust was perhaps our favorite aspect of the pizzas. Light and airy, it crackled when we bit in and had a pleasant floury flavor without much char. Unfortunately, the crust lacked the rustic character and flavor one finds at other New Haven establishments. After several bites, we all realized that it was pretty bland.

Overall, we found the pizzas satisfying but somewhat boring. The cheese on the red pie with mozzarella was standard supermarket quality and the tomato flavor was minimal, and though the pie was delicious and savory when it first emerged from the oven, as it cooled it became much less appetizing.

Chicken and broccoli pie.

The chicken and broccoli pie was worse. Topped with tiny chunks of fried chicken cutlet and fresh broccoli florets, it was light on flavor. Perhaps it was just our entirely subjective taste preferences at work, but we found that we weren’t eager to have seconds.

This is not to say that Dayton Street pies are bad: they’re fine, and are in fact a strong example of very good takeout pizza. These pies would walk all over New Haven eateries like Yorkside Pizza and Alpha Delta Pizza, but when we stacked them against New Haven’s finest, they didn’t quite seem able to compete. Perhaps we just ate there on an off night, and the more favorable reviews are justified. But any one of the Big Three, as well as neighborhood places like Zuppardi’s and Roseland, are superior in our book.

With this in mind, we give Dayton Street Apizza one star on our five-star scale. The pizza is decent, but if you’re looking for the best New Haven pizza we would recommend going elsewhere.

Dayton Street Apizza

60 Dayton St

New Haven, CT 06515

(203) 389-2454

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Red pie with mozzarella at BAR

If the world of New Haven pizza were an ecosystem, BAR might be its platypus. A strange animal that seems difficult to categorize, this brewpub/dance club/pizzeria is undoubtedly distinct from its traditional coal-oven cousins, yet it cranks out thin-crust pies that place it right up there with the best of them. While Sally’s and Pepe’s have an old-world mystique to them, BAR is the youthful underdog. With its throngs of Yalies, handcrafted microbrews, and iconoclastic mashed potato pizza, it doesn’t aim to mimic the venerable palaces of Wooster Street, but it still threatens to top them.

We arrived at the Brü Room at BAR (the hip-looking pizza-and-beer room) on a Wednesday night, and as usual the place was packed with young people. First-time visitors could easily think this place is all about the atmosphere: the cavernous main dining area is packed with gleaming bronze brewing equipment, grad students chat over pitchers of brew, and the soundtrack is a mix of rock and pop, including, on our visit, the Spice Girls and Enrique Iglesias.

But a glance toward the towering stacked of logs above a brick oven at the far end of the room revealed the truth. With its wood-fired oven, BAR is serious about its pizza.

Sitting down, we ordered drinks. While Margo and Stephen opted for sodas (sadly, not Foxon Park sodas but rather $2 cans of Coke and Barq’s root beer), I asked for a personal favorite, BAR’s Damn Good Stout. According to the BAR menu, this hoppy American-style stout has a “smokey espresso scent” and “coffee/cocoa finish,” but what really distinguishes it is a creamy mouthfeel and a deep, malty complexity. BAR also offers the Toasted Blonde (a toasty and lager-like ale), the AmBAR Ale (dark but fruity, a nice fall beer), and the Pale Ale (hoppier than the Blonde), but nothing matches the complexity of the Damn Good Stout.

In keeping with NHPP dining protocol, we ordered two pies: a red pie with mozzarella and the house specialty, which at BAR means the mashed potato and bacon pizza, served on a white pie (no sauce). We ordered ours with onions as well, a popular variation.

The standard red with mozzarella was the first to arrive. Biting into still-molten slices, we were overwhelmed by the pizza’s robust tomato flavor, which had a depth that suggested über-concentrated oven-roasted pomodoro. In the midst of this tomato explosion, however, other flavors like cheese and garlic played a clear secondary role. Garlic was almost nowhere to be found, and a thin layer of cheese lacked the milky unctuousness and heft that one associates with greater pies. The crust, characteristic of BAR pizza, was New Haven’s thinnest: uniformly cracker-thin, even at the edges, it was crisp and not at all charred. But pizza eaters who enjoy a chewier and more substantial crust would do well to look elsewhere.

We were much more excited about our second pie. With its chunks of crisp and meaty bacon, savory dice onions, and smooth lumps of mashed potato, this showstopper was the hit of the night. The mashed potato and bacon combo creates a wave of textural contrasts, in which the chew and crunch of the bacon is offset by the rich mouthfeel of the potatoes. Add onions, which at BAR are slightly undercooked and aromatic to say the least, and the resultant flavor bomb is truly intense. Wash it down with a Damn Good Stout or AmBAR Ale, and few things are better.

As we continued eating, we noticed that none of us had any interest in the plain red pie with mozzarella. Partly, of course, this was due to the raging success of the mashed potato pie, but the observation was also cause for alarm. When the red pie cooled off, it simply wasn’t that great. Room temperature reveals the flavor nuances that heat masks, and the relatively lackluster cheese quality of BAR’s pizza began to show through. To put it differently, the cheese pie was still good, but by New Haven standards, it was middling.

In conclusion, BAR makes an astounding mashed potato pizza, but its red pie with mozzarella falls short of New Haven pizza perfection. We give BAR pizza a ranking of three stars on our five star scale.

BAR

254 Crown St

New Haven, CT 06511

(203) 495-1111

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The gorgeous red pie with mozzarella at Roseland. Slick with oil and deliciously cheesy.

When Stephen, Margo, and I decided to make the 20-minute trek out to Derby to visit Roseland Apizza, we knew we were in for a treat. This neighborhood joint has been extolled by none other than Roadfood guru Michael Stern, who calls Roseland “one of the great pizzerias in Connecticut, ergo one of the best on earth.” Although acknowledging Roseland’s myriad temptations—”honest bread with old-time character,” fried calamari with a “shattering-crisp crust,” and pasta specials ranging from lobster ravioli to a classic spaghetti and meatballs—Stern concedes that this is first and foremost a pizza place. “Whatever else you eat, you must eat pizza when you come to Roseland.”

Roseland has the added distinction of being good enough (allegedly) to challenge the supremacy of New Haven’s Big Three (Pepe’s, Sally’s, Modern). As one recent reviewer on Yelp.com puts it,

Anyone who complains about price or tries to compare Roseland’s to the commercialized, “sold-out” pizza joints in New Haven totally misses the magical spell that Roseland’s cast. At the end of the day no one can deny that Roseland’s is “one of a kind” and any of its competitors can only offer a good meal.

So despite the irony that our first NHPP pizza excursion would be in Derby, not in New Haven, we weren’t too concerned.

We arrived at Roseland after a wrong turn and a tentative creep through what seemed like a purely residential neighborhood, only to find a busy parking lot and the restaurant’s pink neon sign glowing like a beacon in the January cold.

The neon-lit exterior of Roseland Apizza, covered with January snow.

The interior confirmed what the exterior suggested: Roseland is a small-town New England kind of place, a pizzeria where closing time depends on how many people are in the dining room, where the waitresses know people by name and refer to the few they don’t know (read: us) as hon’. The place is small, with about eight booths and six tables in the main dining room. Dozens of specials, including tempting specialty pizzas topped with things like shrimp casino and oil-packed Italian tuna, are written on a blackboard. The requisite framed photos of family and famous patrons grace the walls, giving the restaurant an old-time feel much like Pepe’s or Sally’s.

In truth, the place is old: founded in 1935, eight years after Pepe’s and three before Sally’s, it ranks back there with the best of them and is surrounded by just as much legend. The current owner claims that serving pizza at Roseland was her idea, a plan that emerged when she was a 13-year old girl whose father’s bakery was struggling when gas prices skyrocketed during World War II. Admittedly, this account makes the Roseland pizza tradition seem more recent than its 1935 founding date, but as we can attest, the pizza is still damn good.

While other diners were slumped in their seats next to enormous, half-eaten antipasto platters and pasta dishes, we arrived hungry and promptly ordered some cream sodas and birch beer. Like other reputable New Haven-style pizza places, Roseland serves traditional Foxon Park sodas from nearby East Haven, which are slightly less sweet than Coke or Sprite since they’re still made with real cane sugar. For food, we ordered a medium red pie with mozzarella (or, in layperson’s terms, a cheese pizza), as well as a medium Roseland Special topped with sausage and mushrooms. When our server asked if we wanted fresh garlic, we hastily said yes.

The wait for food was long, maybe 40 minutes, and admittedly somewhat painful. But when the pizzas arrived, we were happy.

The red pie with mozzarella was a garlicky, cheesy delight, with a thin crust, even by New Haven standards. The cheese had a pleasant milky flavor and real texture to it—definitely not the watered-down supermarket shreds of lesser pizzerias. This pizza definitely wasn’t bland, a fact that was reinforced by visible streaks of orange oil and a pronounced saltiness. It was, however, lightly sauced, with tomato flavor playing second fiddle to garlic and cheese. And of course, one can’t forget that distinguishing factor of New Haven-style pizza: the crust. Here it was crisp and slightly charred, with only the tiniest bit of chew. A scant inch around the perimeter, it was neither thick nor particularly airy, but it also was not so thin as the razor-thin, nearly nonexistent crusts at New Haven’s BAR.

The Roseland Special, our second pie, was piled with mushrooms and sausage to the point where Stephen, reaching for a particularly weighty slice, found it collapse under the weight of its toppings. Undoubtedly delicious, the Special was a sort of textural explosion, with sausage that was tender and a cut above the standard stuff complementing the more delicate mushrooms and melty cheese. Garlicky like our other pie, the Special had an even thinner crust than its sibling, a testament to the homey irregularities of New Haven pizzas.

The house specialty Roseland Special was heaped with tender sausage and juicy mushrooms.

Overall, we thought the pizzas were proud examples of the New Haven style, and we had only minor criticisms. All of us found the pies to be somewhat on the salty side, and Margo noted that the crust was too brittle and thin for her taste. In addition, we all noted that tomato sauce is not a major component of Roseland pizzas: tomato flavor was somewhat lacking in both pies, even though the overall result was nonetheless balanced and delicious. The most notable element of the pizzas was the cheese.

We give Roseland pizza a four star rating, which celebrates it as exemplary New Haven-style pizza that falls only slightly below pizza perfection.

Roseland Apizza

350 Hawthorne Ave

Derby, CT 06418

(203) 735-0494

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Our plan? To visit a dozen of the most traditional local pizza places: not just Pepe’s and Sally’s, the inescapable giants of Wooster Street, but also lesser-known gems including Roseland Apizza and Zuppardi’s. Eating our way through mounds of chewy crust and cheesy “muzz” (that’s mozzarella for you non-New Haveners), we will rate each pizzeria and develop what may be the sole comprehensive guide to New Haven’s best pizza places.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy. If you’re at all like us, you might find yourself running out for a slice sometime soon, or even a whole pie.