New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
A moveable feast
For 83 years, Sally’s Apizza was only available out of its storied Wooster Street location. Now, you can enjoy it anywhere in the country. Early this year, the renowned New Haven pizzeria announced it had teamed up with Goldbelly, a mail-order platform that works with restaurants and chefs to ship regional foods throughout the country. “Whether it’s sausage in
Santa Fe, fresh tomato in Tallahassee, mootz in Minneapolis, or potato in Portland, all your dreams can come true with Sally’s nationwide shipping,” Sally’s posted on Jan. 30, announcing the new partnership.
Sally’s offers three-packs of its 12-inch pies for $99, which are shipped frozen with ice packs. Three varieties are available: sauce with mozzarella, pepperoni and white potato and rosemary. There’s also a sampler with one of each. Heating instructions are included.
But can a frozen version of its famous pizza evoke the same nostalgic feelings as a visit to New Haven? Would there be the same crispness to the crust, freshness to the sauce, char on the bottom?
We decided to experiment, sending a Goldbelly package from Sally’s to a colleague based in San Francisco. Chris Preovolos, an associate product manager for Hearst Newspapers, lived and worked in southern Connecticut
for 13 years. The pizza aficionado moved west seven years ago, and has been back east just once since then — and he ate at Frank Pepe’s Fairfield location.
We also sent a package from Zuppardi’s Apizza of West Haven, which sells six-packs of its 10-inch pizzas on
Goldbelly ($83 to $87) in varieties like mozzarella, sausage and fresh tomato.
Preovolos reheated some of the pies at his home, using both his conventional oven and his Ooni portable pizza oven, in which he was able to get temperatures to 650 -700 degrees.
He also loaded pies from both pizzerias into the top case on his motorcycle, and rode to the office to share with colleagues at the San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate building, where he heated them in a conventional oven.
After his taste tests, he shared his
TWO FAMOUS NEW HAVEN-AREA PIZZA JOINTS ANNOUNCED THAT THEY WOULD START SHIPPING PIES NATIONWIDE. BUT CAN A FROZEN VERSION OF APIZZA EVOKE THE SAME NOSTALGIC FEELINGS AS A VISIT TO THE ACTUAL PIZZERIAS? WE DECIDED TO TEST IT BY SENDING SOME TO OUR COLLEAGUES OUT ON THE WEST COAST.
experiences with Hearst Connecticut. (Interview is edited for length and clarity.)
How did the pizzas arrive?
CP: The pies were totally frozen when I got them. They were packed with those big blocks of ice, then there was insulation that wrapped all around it. One thing I liked about Sally’s [packaging] was that it had tape on their boxes that said “New Haven, 1938” all over it. It came with these cute pizza boxes that said “Sally’s.”
How did you reheat them?
CP: Zuppardi’s [instructions] said 425 degrees for 10-12 minutes, but that was not the most ideal situation. I tried two different things. I put one in the Ooni oven, and got it pretty hot, and it got very good char on the bottom. But I put them in frozen because I didn’t have time to defrost. The middle was not right. I think if you defrosted it, then put it in, I think that would be your best bet — even though they’re already cooked.
When I put them in at 425, they came out not as done as I would have liked. [I cooked another Zuppardi’s] pie for 8 minutes at 550 degrees and they were better. I put them straight on the rack, and the bottom was crisp. I had it high enough that there was some char on it. Everything was properly heated and bubbly on the top.
Sally’s was fully cooked and charred and everything. Zuppardi’s were not. Sally’s pizza is so thin that you run the risk of it getting a crackery crust [if reheated too long.] But it seemed like there was less sauce, or the sauce had lost some of its liquid, moisture. You have to eat it immediately. It’s not like the restaurant where you get a large pie and sit there for 20 minutes and eat it. You get a stiff, cracker-like crust.
Can you describe the taste of the ingredients?
CP: Sally’s sauce itself was very good. It’s a good balance of flavor and sweetness. It really reminded me of being in New Haven…Even though I didn’t think the sauce was as good in the shipped form as it is having it fresh, the overall flavor of it was excellent.
Zuppardi’s had a nice crispness to the bottom, a good chewiness to the crust. The sausage was my favorite. It was really good.
The Sally’s potato pie was excellent. It was less dry than the red pies — the rosemary flavor was strong, the potatoes got crisp. It was the one that reminded me the most of New
Haven because it’s so different. That was my favorite of all of them. The garlic flavor was great. It was overall a great pie and if I were to order again, I would get more of those.
Does it evoke the same experience?
CP: The Sally’s pizza had that char on it. I was explaining [to colleagues] that I didn’t get quite as much black char on my fingers from eating it like I would in New Haven, but there was a very familiar feeling, kind of a nostalgic thing.
Zuppardi’s pies were very round, whereas Sally’s were like that kind of whatever, oblong-ish, round-ish shape, which is one of my favorite things — kind of the randomness of the shape of the pizza.
We [my colleagues and I] were [sharing] stories about going to the restaurants, and there was debate over whether or not we were cutting the pizzas sloppily enough — if our pieces were too symmetrical. It was just really fun to reminisce with people. But on the flip side, I’ve been talking up New Haven pizza for so many years to people in San Francisco, that it’s not fair for them to try it for the first time as a frozen pizza.
Is it worth ordering from afar if you’re missing a taste of home?
CP: If you want a taste of New Haven, if you’ve been missing the taste, it’s definitely worth trying, for a birthday party or something like that.
Zuppardi’s is a better value (at six pizzas versus three) but Sally’s is more of a full New Haven experience.
It definitely is a good reminder of home, especially if you’re sharing with other people from Connecticut. I think that was the most fun about it. It started up all these conversations about southern Connecticut that I hadn’t had with these people before.