Connecticut's Best Pizza Restaurant Has Been Serving Slices For 100 Years

If you live in or near Connecticut, or if you're even somewhat acquainted with what makes New Haven-style pizza special, you know Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana. The restaurant is an iconic institution: It helped create an entire pizza style, and has been serving up some of that style's best examples for a century. Frank Pepe is often considered one of the best pizza restaurants in the United States.

Its story begins with Frank Pepe, who came to America from Naples in 1909. He returned to Italy to fight in World War I, then came back to New Haven and worked in a pasta factory and a bakery, where he began making "apizza," a Napoletana-style pizza that's thin, crispy, and kept simple toppings-wise. Pepe's, for example, were tomato pies he'd sell while walking the New Haven streets with them stacked on his head. Saving money as a street vendor, he finally purchased the bakery where he worked and established his pizzeria in 1925. 

The restaurant served just two types of pie, the original tomato version with grated pecorino cheese, and one that included anchovies. Members of Pepe's family, including his wife Filomena and eventually their daughters Elizabeth and Serafina, all worked at the pizzeria. It has remained a family business, passed down through the generations as it has expanded to include 17 locations in seven states. The original New Haven spot, though, is crucial to not only the restaurant's legacy but that of New Haven pizza as a style.

New Haven pizza was born thanks to people just like Pepe: Southern Italian immigrants who settled in the area and worked in bakeries, where they'd also start making the apizza they knew and loved from back home. Pepe was one of the first of these bakers to turn his operation into a restaurant. If you're interested in the edible history lesson of the oldest restaurants across the United States, you'll appreciate that Frank Pepe is the oldest, continuously run pizzeria in Connecticut, and it's in the top five oldest for the whole country. 

Today, New Haven pizza is nationally known and locally prized, and Frank Pepe remains one of the best New Haven pizza restaurants. Many New Haven-ites swear allegiance to their favorite pizzerias; interestingly, one of Frank Pepe's "rivals" is Sally's Apizza, opened by Pepe's nephew Salvatore Consiglio in 1938. 

While there are plenty of great spots in town, Frank Pepe is a historical taste of true apizza. You can still get that original tomato pie in its simplest form or with add-ons like marinated shrimp, as well as a specific and very popular offshoot of New Haven pizza, white clam pie. Frank Pepe's well-done, crispy, flaky, toothsome pies also come with various combinations of classic pizza toppings from veggies to meatballs. The restaurant keeps the menu's focus on apizza, offering just a few salads in addition to the pies, plus beer and wine to pair with your authentic New Haven experience.