The PIZZA Book

PREFACE

“I wish you would stop being useless and start being pizza.”
-Many / Unknown

We adore pizza. 

So does most of humanity—except maybe that one guy who claims he's "gluten-free for life" (but we've seen him eyeing the crust) or his friend who thinks pineapple or lettuce belong on pizza. 

For those of us with Italian roots, especially ones whose ancestors sailed from Naples, passed through Ellis Island, and eventually conquered Brooklyn, Little Italy, Long Island, and the wilds of New Jersey, pizza isn't just food. This universal obsession with pizza feels like a personal victory lap. It's a major point of pride. And for those of us whose families were basically at ground zero in Brooklyn when America's pizza saga kicked off? It's our birthright.

From very humble immigrant beginnings, now ninety-three percent of Americans admit to eating pizza at least once per month. The percentage seems correct but we’ll bet the ‘once a month part’ skews closer to once a week for many.  

So, on a recent road trip from Manhattan to New Hampshire's White Mountains—deliberately dodging the soulless interstates for those charming, winding back roads in our vintage Alfa Romeo—we couldn't help but notice: Westchester, the Hudson Valley, western Connecticut, and all of New England are absolutely teeming with pizzerias. We're talking cozy mom-and-pop gems, legendary Connecticut apizza shrines (you know, the ones with the charred, thin-crust glory), massive chains, and every glorious Greek or fusion hybrid in between.

Somewhere in Connecticut we got hungry and of course being in ‘the pizza state’ the lunch cuisine choice was obvious, so we started googling, yelping, and soon counting the locations. Hundreds on our journey. Almost every crossroads and hamlet had one or more pizzerias. Shell station, antique shop, pizza places, country road road, Mobil station, deli, pizzerias, more country road, more pizza joints, over and over. What started as a relaxed, leaf-peeping jaunt soon devolved into a white-knuckle pizza safari and morphed our serene autumn getaway into a sauce-and-cheese-fueled quest (and added a few days to the drive).

Over a medium pepperoni and mushroom pizza somewhere in Litchfield County, we searched amazon.com for guidebooks on pizza and while there are an abundance of pizza cookbooks, hundreds in fact, and a few on pizza history, nothing really met our needs. 

So there we were—writers by trade, pizza obsessives by blood, Neapolitan NDA still bubbling in our veins, and Brooklyn pioneer cred from the days when pizza was basically cheap calories and carbs for poor immigrants. Six decades of living, breathing, and occasionally wearing pizza sauce later, we thought: Why let someone else half-ass this? We’ll write the damn book ourselves.

Our original timeline? An easy six months. Research would be vacation time (eat slices, take notes, repeat), the stories would practically leap onto the page, and our lifelong expertise would do the heavy lifting. Cute fantasy. Then reality slapped us like a mound of fresh, moist pizza dough: there were thousands of pizzerias begging to be visited, infinite slices demanding to be “quality-checked,” pizza academies offering diplomas we suddenly needed, festivals where grown adults argue over char spots, and endless miles of scenic (read: detour-filled) country roads. A year or two, tops, we told ourselves.

That was four years and many antacids ago.

The mission here is straightforward: to be the definitive guide to pizza in the Northeast—from Philly’s tomato pies up to Maine’s lobster and wild-blueberry toppings (wait, no, we’re gonna  draw the line at fruit on pizza). We’re talking Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts. We added Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, not because they are known pizza nodes, or even pockets of Italian descendants (they are not), but because the New York/Connecticut style pizza makers have begun to set up camp there (and yeah, the book is about the Northeast, so there’s that). Histories, myths, regional feuds, style breakdowns, love letters to the legends, and honest takes on everywhere we managed to waddle into. Plus, we’ve mapped out some glorious pizza trails—perfect for a day of gluttony or a long weekend of arterial assault.

We undoubtedly missed a few gems (hey, even us pizza pros have blind spots). Drop us a line for the inevitable second edition (marcoandmarie@thepizzabook.us) or on the website (www.thepizzabook.us); we’ll add your favorite and pretend we knew about it all along. We also skipped some excellent pizza from places that moonlight as steakhouses, breweries, or whatever—our laser focus is on spots where pizza is the main event, not the side hustle.

One final, crucially important preface disclaimer—because in today’s cancel-happy world, someone’s bound to clutch pearls over a lukewarm review:
We are not here to torch anyone’s nonna, trash-talk a sacred family recipe, or gleefully tank a pizzeria’s Yelp score into oblivion. This isn’t some smug food-snob hit piece. We’re here to celebrate pizza in all its glorious, sauce-stained majesty—the culture, the history, the regional holy wars, the late-night grease miracles. We come in peace, bearing napkins.

Our operating philosophy is simple and possibly borderline delusional: there is no such thing as truly bad pizza. Blasphemous? Maybe. But hear us out. Even the saddest, limpest, cardboard-crusted frozen supermarket disc—yes, the one that costs less than a subway ride and tastes vaguely like regret—has its moment. It’s there for you at 2 a.m. when the fridge is empty and you’re willing to trade pride for convenience. It’s democratic. It’s forgiving. It’s... pizza. And therefore, it earns a seat at our table (probably the kids’ table, but still).

Of course, some pizzas are objectively better than others. Some ascend to art: blister-charred Neapolitan masterpieces, New Haven apizza with edges of near-volcanic char, bar pies so thin they defy physics, grandma slices swimming in nostalgic sauce. Others are merely very good. A few are solid workhorses. And yes, some are... let’s call them “acquired tastes” best enjoyed after three beers and zero standards. We’ll be honest about the hierarchy—because lying would be an insult to the craft—but we’re not swinging any pizzeria wrecking ball. If a place didn’t make the cut for a mention here, it’s probably because we ran out of pages or waistband elasticity, not because we’re out here playing pizza Gestapo.

So relax. No reputations will be harmed in the making of this book. (We save our real venom for pineapple topping heretics, but even they get a pass today.)

Now, armed with this manifesto of tolerance, buy some stretchy pants, go forth into the wilds of the Northeast. Hunt the perfect slice. Argue with strangers about sauce-under-cheese versus sauce-over. Build cholesterol monuments in honor of the old country. Mangia like your metabolism is a myth, like tomorrow’s diet is a problem for Future You (who, let’s be honest, will also choose pizza).

Just... maybe peek at a calorie app now and then. You know, for science. We certainly didn’t. Our secret’s safe—yours is too. Buon appetito, you beautiful, carb-loaded reprobates.

COMING SOON:

INTRODUCTION 
and 
Chapter One: A History Of Pizza