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L $$$ Carlton Hotel on Madison Ave-
nue, 88 Madison Ave. ( & 212/532-4100;
www.carltonhotelny.com). $$ Washing-
ton Square Hotel, 103 Waverly Place
( & 800/222-0418 or 212/777-9515; www.
washingtonsquarehotel.com).
oven pizzas are a superb theater district
alternative (with long no-reservations lines
to prove it).
( John F. Kennedy International (15
miles/24km); Newark Liberty International
(16 miles/27km); LaGuardia (8 miles/13km).
Pizzerias
220
Pepe's Versus Sally's
You Say Pizza, I Say Apizza
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven's rich legacy of pizza—or
“apizza,” as it's generally spelled in south-
central Connecticut, for reasons no one
remembers—began in the late 19th cen-
tury with an influx of Italian immigrant fac-
tory workers, hungry for the tastes of the
old country. Wooster Street, the heart of
New Haven's Little Italy, was a natural
place for former street seller Frank Pepe
to open his Neopolitan-style pizzeria in a
modest brick storefront in 1925. And 13
years later, it was only natural for Frank's
nephew, Sal Consiglio, to open his own
restaurant, Sally's Apizza, in a similar build-
ing a block down the street.
But after that, the situation curdled into
one of the longest-running rivalries in
American gastronomy. Pepe's and Sally's
are both still run by their founding families,
and they're fiercely competitive. Yet both
serve basically the same menu—nothing
but pizza—and it's the same New Haven-
style variation: thin-crust pizza, topped
with tomato sauce, garlic, and hard
cheeses (unlike the mozzarella that's stan-
dard on most American pies). At both res-
taurants, there's almost always a line
down the street to get in.
Pizza connoisseurs regard both Pepe's
and Sally's as two of the country's finest
classic pizzerias, with their hand-formed
pies baked in vintage coal-fired brick ovens
until the cheese and tomato sauce bubble
and blister temptingly, and the crusts char
ever so slightly at the edge. So what's the
difference between the two? Well, at
Pepe's the white and red clam pizzas,
made with freshly shucked clams, are the
signature dish, while Sally's shines most
with its vegetable pizzas, like the “white”
potato-and-rosemary pizza. It's generally
agreed that Sally's crust is a little thinner
and lighter; service tends to be friendlier
and faster at Pepe's. The long wooden
booth-lined dining room at Pepe's is a lit-
tle more smartly kept up, while Sally's
maintains an atmospheric 1960s-throw-
back decor of vinyl booths and scarred
wood paneling. Sally's is closed on Mon-
days and doesn't open until 5pm, while
Pepe's is open 7 days a week for lunch as
well as dinner. Sally's is cash-only; Pepe's
accepts credit cards. Frank Sinatra signed
a photo on the wall at Sally's, but he hung
out more at Pepe's. And so on and so
forth.
But there is one major difference—
Pepe's recently opened branches in Man-
chester and Fairfield, Connecticut, and is
planning to open more. Will expansion
ruin the handmade, small-scale quality of
Pepe's pizzas, or will they be able to repli-
cate the Wooster Street magic elsewhere?
Pizza fans watch anxiously—and their
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