Frank Pepe
New Haven pizza is just better.
I know, you’re likely angry and asking, “Who the fuck is this jabroni lecturing me about pizza?”
I had a feeling you would doubt my pizza-cred, so let me expand upon my extensive crusted resume. I have been to most every “best pizza place” in New York City, including all the ones in Staten Island. My living room proudly boasts The New York City Pizza Project book on our coffee table. I once got into a screaming match at Joe’s with another pizza-crazed local when he overheard me say the slice was “just okay” - it was, and I stand by it. I still hold a grudge against Mayor Bill de Blasio for eating a slice of pizza with a fork and knife at Goodfella’s. Most importantly, I have eaten more New York City pizza than any other type of food in my 45 years of life.
So, yeah, I know pizza in this town.
Thus, I truly wanted to believe that New York City had the best pizza this side of Italy. I mean, Chicago is just weird. Detroit tastes like a fancier version of Ellio’s frozen pizza. D.C.’s jumbo slice is a crime against humanity. Most of the rest of the country knows only Dominos, Papa John’s, and Pizza Hut. If I were president, my first order of business would be addressing this tragedy of the common-stomachs, as too many Americans have never known a good slice.
And then, one sweaty day in July, my own pizza world got turned upside down.
Picture it: New Haven, 2021. A handsome, young man with olive skin meets a seductive Italian-American pizza. There is an instant attraction. They laugh, they sing. Shortly afterwards, he's arrested for showing her how he can hold a slice without using his hands, but I digress. He nears the pizza, and soon is ravishing her layers of cheese, sauce, and firm crust. He spends much of the next day in the shower with a loofa sponge scrubbing her greasy pizza prints off his body. He suggests that they meet again, but this time to invite mushrooms into their tryst. Maybe olives, too. She is insulted and storms out of the room forever.
Well, my fellow Golden Girls, that olive skinned man was me, and that pizza was Frank Pepe.
A gift of having gone to college in New England was that I often got invited to return up I-95 for Smitty’s wedding, or the birth of the other Smitty’s kid, or the 40th birthday of a third Smitty at some sports ba-hhhhh in Mahhhh-shfield. Along the way, I learned the three things you can expect from every New England trip. First, the nicest restaurant in any city north of Hartford will have, at least, three massive flat screen TVs playing a Red Sox game. Second, whether you’re at a baby naming, wedding, or funeral, someone will inevitably start a “Yankees suck” chant that will last for eight passionate minutes. Finally, all roads north lead through New Haven and it is the fool who sleeps on this temple of pizza, especially in the summertime.
During a blessed and limited window from July to September, Frank Pepe, aka “Old Reliable," picks from the ripest nightshades in the land to offer “The Fresh Tomato Pie." It’s infuriating in its simplicity - “fresh native tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, garlic."
That’s it.
And, it is incredibly good. At first, I chose to be in denial and told myself it was “just okay," but who was I kidding? It was the best pizza I had outside of Italy.
New York City imposes a blind celebration of everything in this town being the best, even when other places do it far better. To most residents here, New Haven is not even a place and its pizza should be renamed as salty cheese and ketchup on stale bread. It’s that wonderful, open-mindedness that ensures New Yorkers remain beloved in the hearts and minds of the sad peasants living in an assortment of useless, fly-over cities. No offense, of course.
But, they were wrong; I was wrong. New Haven pizza is just better.
Now, rather than continue to mislead you into thinking this is a tale about pizza, this is actually a story of child neglect.
Didn’t see that one coming, did you?
You see, our kids also love New Haven pizza. In fact, they may love it more than we do. Whenever we are in a car - any car, for any reason - they ask if we are going to New Haven to “eat that awesome pizza." The answer is usually no, as we limit New England trips to only when absolutely necessary, but when we do go, our kids will cheer and ask every 90 seconds if we are “there yet."
On a recent visit north, we stopped in to Frank Pepe and ate our weight in pizza. Mind you, our kids are tiny, but have adult-sized stomachs (for pizza only). The rest of the trip was nice, but the kids were mostly interested in knowing when we were driving back home through New Haven to get another pie.
I can swear to you that we left Portland, Maine, with the best of intentions. It was a reasonable hour and the map gods promised we would land in New Haven around dinner time. However, man plans and traffic on I-95 laughs. Between construction and fender benders, our arrival time was stretching well past bedtime. Still, the kids willed themselves awake as we entered Connecticut. But, more traffic, construction, and narrowing the highway to a lane had them drifting off to sleep.
Their one and only ask, “Please get us a pizza to eat at home.”
Noga and I promised. No matter the hour, we would break into Frank Pepe and cook the pizza ourselves if we had to. Fortunately, we arrived just before closing and ordered the largest fresh tomato pie we could get our hands on. I waited with the sleeping kids in the car as Noga watched the pizza artisans weave magic into a hundred-year-old oven to birth this cheesy gift to humanity.
Eventually, she exited carrying a box larger than her, steaming fresh-out-of-the-oven seduction. She put the pizza on the dashboard, and we simply stared at it, and each other. It must have felt just as Adam and Eve did, gazing at that temptress of a tree, knowing even a tiny bite was forbidden.
“Let me just take a look,” I implored. “If I can’t eat it, I want to, at least, witness its bubbling hot beauty.”
Noga slowly raised the box, building the tension, and releasing a garlicky exhaust straight into my senses.
“I can’t, I can’t!” I yelled. “This feels wrong!”
And then, my wife leaned in and, in a sexy voice, whispered, “But it feels so right.”
She grabbed a slice, playfully moving it up and down and towards her mouth.
“No, no, no!” I tried, but it was too late. She had bitten from the pizza of knowledge, guaranteeing our exile from the garden of good parenting.
“Ohhhhhhhhhhh-ahhhhhhhhh!” Noga moaned, as the bite became two. Soon the slice was gone. She grabbed another.
“What are you doing, devil woman?” I demanded.
Rather than reply, she just moved a slice towards me. First came the smell, then the plump tomatoes writhing in a sea of garlicky cheese. The crust, firm and erect, just begging for it.
“Come on,” Noga said. “You mean, you don’t want this?”
“I … I … I,” I stuttered. My mind was telling me no, but my body - my body - was telling me yes.
“Well maybe, just a slice,” I whispered.
One slice became two, became eight, and our full pizza was nearing half. Noga and I were covered in pizza grease, engaged in a ménage à trois with a fresh tomato pie in the front seat of our rental car, with the kids sleeping in the back.
As she came up for air, Noga asked, “I mean, they won’t eat more than half a pizza, will they?”
“Definitely not,” I replied.
We closed the box, trying to change the subject and talk about anything less lustful than the pizza sitting on the dashboard - winking at us through the bubbles on the crust, whispering in the seductive voice of an old Italian man, “Eat-a me!” Enticing us with its garlicky pheromones. Willing itself into us.
Fifteen minutes passed and we still had an hour-and-a-half to get to New York City. Neither the smell of the pizza, nor the stop-and-go traffic near Bridgeport woke up the kids. The pie just sat there, tempting us.
“Just one more slice,” the pizza whispered. “You know you want me!”
As a lifelong subscriber to Oscar Wilde’s approach on impulse, I, too, can resist everything except temptation.
“Fuck it, pass me another slice,” I begged.
One became four slices. Our half was now reduced to a quarter. The mighty pizza had become a shell of its former self, yet still so sexy - dressed in only flimsy wax paper and sweating hot mozzarella.
“I mean, the kids are going to be disappointed with how little is left.” I said, lusting for the remaining pizza, but seeking to justify this terrible crime on their adorable stomachs.
“I know, it’s sad,” Noga replied, also staring at the pizza with desire. “But …”
“I really don’t want to disappoint them,” I shared.
“Me neither,” Noga said. “We should probably just finish the pizza then, right?”
“Absolutely,” I said, “it’s definitely the right thing to do.”
“The kids need to learn that they can’t always get what they want," she added.
Noga threw open the box and we destroyed the remnants of the pizza. We did things to that pie that I’m too ashamed to describe here. When our pizza pillage ended, we just stared at each other.
“What have we done?” I cried out.
I briefly considered keeping the box and filling it with a lesser-New York City pizza along the way. Then, I remembered that it was too unique in size and texture to replicate anywhere. Our kids were too smart.
“Let’s just dump the box,” I told Noga.
I stopped at a gas station in the Bronx to ditch the box and destroy any evidence. We used wet wipes to clean up any greasy evidence on the steering wheel, and even sprayed cologne to overwhelm the smell of cheesy wonder in the car. As we entered Manhattan, we were just a normal family returning home from a trip with no sign of any New Haven pizza anywhere.
As we pulled up to the apartment, Mila’s eyes opened and she asked, “Did you get us pizza?”
Noga and I looked at each other, and told her the only truth that seemed available to us at the time.
“Sorry, my love, Frank Pepe was closed,” I said, “Must have been a flood or a fire in the kitchen.”
Mila’s eyes welled up with tears. “That’s not fair!” she said. “You promised!”
“I know, I know,'“ I replied. “We’re disappointed, and really wanted some pizza, too.”
“We’ll go next time, I promise!” Noga offered.
“I don’t want next time, I want it NOW!” She yelled, waking up the car and inviting her little brother into the horror.
“Where is our pizza?!” Leo added.
“We couldn’t get it,” I replied.
“Nooooooooooooooooooo!” he screamed.
Noga and I comforted the kids - explaining the likely arson and/or biblical flood that took place at Frank Pepe that solemn evening as we got them upstairs to sleep. Along the way, making endless promises of more trips up north, with multiple stops in New Haven. Soon, they fell back asleep - dreaming of pizza and revenge against all those, including their parents, who stood between them and their favorite meal in the whole wide world.
Exhausted, Noga and I collapsed on the couch, bellies full of pizza. I looked deeply into her eyes, my beloved Eve, and said, “You know, I regret nothing and would do it again for that pizza.”
She smiled, grabbed my hand, and said, “Me too.”
If I Can Make It There is a collection of stories about the things and people, including me, that move through New York City. A celebration of the characters who crawl through endless traffic, slog through the subways, and stroll under the shade of scaffolding.
Like our fragmented and broken transportation system, some stories race with enthusiasm to a red light and others remain hopelessly stuck behind a double-parked Mercedes with New Jersey plates and blinkers on as the driver screams over the honking, “Just hold on for a minute! I’m only stopping in for a quick dinner at Sardis.”
And, all of these stories could occur nowhere else but the greatest city on Earth - New York Fucking City.