Pizza on Parole: A Search for the Best Slice in Town

A text message from my editor awoke me from my slumber, alerting me of a new assignment – find the best slice of pizza in East Haven.

I had been hibernating for three months, ever since the North Branford sandwich hunt purged me well. I was hungry. So hungry I bit right through my bedpost. I spit out a mouthful of sawdust and splinters, tore through my den scrounging for supplies: a scale, tape measurer, paper and a camera.

The hunt was on.

I blew through every traffic light en route to my first stop, John and Maria’s. I swerved right into the driveway and stormed into the restaurant in search of my first slice.

First lesson of the day: John and Maria’s do not serve individual slices. I ordered a small cheese pizza, half meatball. Seemed like the type of place that could work their way around a meatball.

The wait was manageable, and despite my anxious fingers tearing at the upholstery and the drool dribbling down my chin, I sat the twelve minutes before snatching the box and scrambling back to my car to devour the pie. I jumped right in, scorching my famished palate on a textbook example of “apizza.” A small 5 x 6 inch slice weighed in at four ounces.  

John and Maria’s, in their 20th year of business, also offers homemade canolis for those with a sweet tooth but there was little time for such a treat – I had pizza to move. I wiped the grease from my face, rolled up my sleeves, rolled down the window and peeled out of the parking lot.

I traveled west down Route 80 until I hit the commercial epicenter of East Haven. Saw a sign for a little place called Capotorto’s Apizza Center nestled next to Tommy’s Tanning. What did I do? I went inside, walked up to the counter and ordered myself a slice of pepperoni.

There was little wait here but I made sure to sit down anyway. I noticed their community involvement: pictures of little leaguers and youth basketball teams adorned the walls next to masterworks in crayon. Type of place you can bring your kids to. 

As for the product, two bucks will get you a healthy six ounce slice of pepperoni, nine inches crust to tip, seven inches wide. Flexible crust, thicker than John and Maria’s, without puddling or tearing. It was a sturdy and slightly doughy slice, good for side bites.

From Capotorto’s I backtracked onto Main Street. Caught a slice lurking in the depths of Minervini’s, a small establishment next to China Star. Eggplant.

This cheeser was nothing to mess with. A beautifully arranged pile of individually breaded chunks sat on a 9 x 8 inch slice and weighed in at a tremendous nine ounces. The cheese was obedient and did not run. There was order to compliment its flavor.

I washed the beast down with a Foxon Park birch beer, a staple in every place I had been to thus far, and followed my nose out the door and to the right until I turned a corner and hit Aniello’s.

Aniello’s, in their twenty-sixth year, offered me a slice built around proven method. This was a business slice, six ounces and eight and a half inches both ways; a fluffy, light crust that flexed in the middle and held form all the way to the tip. One dominating bite took me through the puddlegut and into the pie’s cheesy badlands, right through its connective tissue that perfectly bridged the gap back up to the crust.

I wiped my hands and left, content to return to my hibernation until my cell phone buzzes again for another culinary hunt along Connecticut’s shoreline.