Ethan meets Frank Pepe

Our friend Ethan Bernard is a man of conviction and of absolutes. So when a nutritionist told him that he needed to lay off the gluten, he decided to go cold turkey. And when he was planning his pre-fast gluten-filled blowout, he knew that no ordinary slice of pizza would pass muster. Instead, he boarded the Metro North with Jason and I in tow, bound for a city where the pizza was said to be not only unusual but also the best that many have ever tasted. We were headed for New Haven, Connecticut with someone who truly knew the meaning of lunch at the end of the line.

New Haven is best known, of course, as the home of Yale University, but to hear Ethan tell it, the pizza came in a very close second as a mark of distinction. He had first heard about it on a Food Network show and, researching it further, found that “New Haven-style” pizzerias were starting to spring up all over the map, in cities as far away as San Diego and Key West.

That's one impressive pizza spatula.

All of which begs the question: what exactly is it? New Haven-style pizza is cooked in a coal fired oven to give it a crisp-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the inside texture. “The char is very important,” Ethan explained. But it’s more complicated than a simple crust distinction. The pizzas are sometimes called tomato pies, because the originals consisted of sauce and a light dusting of pecorino cheese, no mozzarella.

These days you can get your pie cheesed or uncheesed, so when we put in our order at Frank Pepe, the oldest of the New Haven pizza establishments, we opted to try both. (Note: Fans of Sally’s, the other longtime New Haven favorite, will undoubtedly criticize our choice of Pepe over Sal. Let me just say that these decisions are never easy.)

All three of us have been New Yorkers for some time, forming a tough pizza jury (See: pizza snobbery), but I am happy to report that the verdict was universally positive. The pizza we’d gotten with mozzarella and mushrooms was mammoth and charmingly ovular, and the crust was expertly charred. But surprisingly, it was the plain tomato pie that was the real standout, delicious in its simplicity and quality. Ethan went so far as to say that the next time he is both eating gluten and in New Haven, he would go straight for the original and skip the mozzarella all together.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering about the Yale campus in an overstuffed daze. Ethan was on the lookout for some Hacky-Sack-playing youngsters to complete the idyllically collegiate picture. Finally, we happened upon a quad where, in one corner, a group of freshman was completing a trust exercise involving a tightrope and in another, a boy and girl were parrying with plastic swords. Ethan beamed, filled with the glow of gluten and youth. “It’s better than anything I could have imagined,” he said.

The evening that followed was more familiar territory: trains and Brooklyn and beer (another forbidden gluten treat). The next day, perhaps a wee bit hungover, Ethan texted us: “New Haven seems but a dream to me now.” Maybe so. But what a lovely pizza dream it was.

Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana. 157 Wooster Street, New Haven, CT 06511. (203) 865-5762.

Want me to take you to lunch? Send your End of the Line suggestions to Submissions@Pitchknives.com.