Pepe's Pizzeria Napoletana, New Haven, CT

I haven't been around for a long time but I have to tell you what I would do for this pizza, travel all the way from Long Island, NY to New Haven CT just to get it. This is by far one of the best pizzas outside of Napoli! It is as well a real Neapolitan pizza, more than any other in New York that I had and what a spot for it, right in New Haven. You don't hear about many Italians immigrating to Connecticut but the ones who did were really good cooks. I would know, I drove an hour and forty minutes just to get a large pie.

I felt truly at home in New Haven's Little Italy more than New York's for one reason, it felt more like Brooklyn than Manhattan. You walk down the street and your smelling from all of these food stores the scent of fresh tomatoes and garlic. In addition to the smells of a good Italian neighborhood, going into Pepe's for the first time, I looked at the pictures on the wall of Frank Pepe and he looked like a combination of my two maternal great-grandfathers. Those are a few reasons to go back.

Let's talk about the result of my day trip. I could tell from walking in to the restaurant that I was in the right place. I could smell the ingredients from the kitchen and I saw all of the people in the kitchen and they looked like we could be related. But enough of my habitual Italian family networking. One important characteristic of this pizza is the fact that it's not a perfect circle like any other pizza. The second thing about this pizza is that I knew that they were getting their ingredients from the pork store that I went into across the street.

It was so artfully cooked that it was incredibly great tasting as well as extremely authentic. In terms of other elements, the crust was so flavorful and the ends were burnt like they were supposed to be. People assume that burnt food isn't good, though, it has a unique and powerful taste and that's how you can tell that the oven has been on a very high heat which a good pizza has to be in.

Case and point, it was one of the best pizza's I've had and it reminded me of something my grandmother or great-grandmother would make. Definitely worth the drive to New Haven to get it.