New Haven’s Apizza Scene Is Drawing Tourists From Across the Country

New Haven, Connecticut, is staking its claim as a destination for pizza lovers nationwide, offering everything from pedal-powered pizza crawls to a hotel suite themed entirely around the city’s signature pie.

Timed to National Pizza Month, New Haven historian and tour guide Colin Caplan has launched a pizza-focused tour aboard the Elm City Party Bike, a 15-passenger pedal-powered trolley that has operated in the city for nine years but is now being used specifically for pizza tours for the first time.

Guests can pick their own stops or join Caplan, who also runs Taste New Haven, on a guided crawl that samples similar pies from multiple pizzerias for side-by-side comparison.

“We’re going to try cheese pizza from three or four different places, and then we’ll rate it at the end, and you can decide what’s better,” Caplan said. “It’s a great way to team build, to have the pizza together, to be outside, to frolic and have some fun.”

The bike tour is one piece of a broader pizza culture that has taken root in the city. The Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale offers a Pizza Suite decorated around the local specialty, complete with gift cards to Sally’s Apizza and Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana — two of the three pizzerias known locally as the “Holy Trinity” of New Haven-style apizza, alongside Modern Apizza.

Caplan said travelers are increasingly building entire trips around New Haven’s food.

“We actually have people who are doing staycations from all over the country,” Caplan said.

A Different Kind of Pie

New Haven’s pizza — known locally as “apizza” — is distinguished by a thin, crispy, chewy crust with a slight char, setting it apart from the styles associated with New York, Chicago and Detroit.

“Let’s face it, New York City has always been the center of pizza in everyone’s mind,” Caplan said. “Everyone knows about these big cities and the pizza scene. What New Haven has had to do was prove itself.”

A traditional New Haven pie can be strikingly simple — just tomato sauce and grated Pecorino Romano, with far less cheese than many diners expect.

“People are obsessed with cheese,” Caplan said. “But, I want to tell you something, the real pizza, the original pizzas, they didn’t have tons of cheese.”

The city is also known for its white clam pizza, a dish closely tied to Frank Pepe’s. Caplan’s own preferred topping is anchovies, which he said were historically the original alternative in New Haven for diners who wanted something beyond a plain pie.

“That little brininess, that little bit of salt, that extra protein, that flavor … it is, to me, complete,” he said.

For Caplan, the appeal of New Haven’s food scene goes beyond ranking the best slice.

“People are coming for pizza, but they’re seeing the culture. They’re seeing what we really have here,” he said. “For a small city, we pack a big punch.”