{"id":282502,"date":"2025-10-06T20:57:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T20:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/282502\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T20:57:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T20:57:19","slug":"connecticut-declares-itself-the-pizza-capital-of-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/282502\/","title":{"rendered":"Connecticut Declares Itself the Pizza Capital of the US"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Yorkers, brace yourselves: Connecticut is officially staking its claim as the \u201cPizza Capital of the U.S.\u201d Yes, that Connecticut. The Nutmeg State just unveiled its first-ever Connecticut Pizza Trail<\/a>, a culinary crawl spanning 100 pizzerias that supposedly proves what locals have been saying for decades: New Haven-style apizza isn\u2019t just good, it\u2019s the best.<\/p>\n

The state has numbers to back it up. According to officials, Connecticut is home to more than 1,300 pizza restaurants and nearly 80 percent are independently owned or family-run. More than 13,000 people cast votes to determine which spots made the trail. The final list is geographically spread across all eight counties, though\u2014unsurprisingly\u2014New Haven dominates the leaderboard. Modern Apizza, Frank Pepe\u2019s and Sally\u2019s Apizza snagged the top three spots, joined by hometown heroes<\/a> like Zuppardi\u2019s in West Haven and Roseland Apizza in Derby.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor more than a century, our apizza has been a source of pride, community and economic strength,\u201d said Anthony Anthony, Connecticut\u2019s chief marketing officer. \u201cThe Connecticut Pizza Trail brings that story to life\u2014and this new experience for residents and visitors alike shines a global spotlight on the people and places that make this state the undisputed Pizza Capital of the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, New York might have something to say about this. After all, Lombardi\u2019s on Spring Street<\/a>\u2014widely credited as the first licensed U.S. pizzeria\u2014fired up its coal ovens back in 1905. The New York slice<\/a> is iconic: thin, foldable, eaten standing up at a Formica counter and forever tied to the city\u2019s immigrant history and grab-and-go culture. Even Naples, the Italian birthplace of pizza, tips its hat to New York\u2019s culinary evolution.<\/p>\n

But Connecticut isn\u2019t bluffing. The charred, chewy crusts of its coal-oven apizza have long drawn pilgrims from across state lines. Barstool\u2019s Dave Portnoy has repeatedly declared<\/a>, \u201cConnecticut is the best pizza state in the country.\u201d And unlike the floppy New York slice, the New Haven pie demands to be eaten hot and whole, straight from the oven, preferably with a clam topping that\u2019s as divisive as pineapple but way more historic.<\/p>\n

So, can Connecticut really wrest the crown from New York? Maybe the only fair way to decide is to clear your calendar, loosen your belt and start driving north on I-95. One thing\u2019s certain: The battle for pizza supremacy just got deliciously heated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Yorkers, brace yourselves: Connecticut is officially staking its claim as the \u201cPizza Capital of the U.S.\u201d Yes,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":282503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,10633,405,403,10634,5226,5225,5228,5227,988,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-282502","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-categories-restaurants","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-news-eating","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-restaurants","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115329226803438311","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}