Best New Haven Style Apizza

New Haven-style “apizza” (“ah-beetz”) emerged in the 1920s from the Neapolitan immigrant community around New Haven’s Wooster Street, most famously with Frank Pepe’s 1925 pizzeria. Like New York-style pizza, it is thin and foldable, but apizza is generally thinner, chewier, oblong (or just irregularly shaped), and baked with more “artful char”. The original New Haven pizzerias use coal-fired ovens, and coal is still closely associated with the style, but it’s not a requirement. At its best, apizza should be crisp, chewy, smoky, and intensely flavored. A blackened crust alone does not make good apizza; the darkness should add complexity, not simply taste burnt.