The Great American Menu: Foods Of The States, Ranked And Mapped

[Chan790]

95. To be honest...

CT's big food claim to fame is that we're the birthplace of pizza in the US (at Pepe's Apizza followed soon after by Modern Apizza in New Haven) before NYC started making an inferior knockoff of New Haven's pie (New Haven is the originator of both red and white pies, NYC made theirs thicker and softer (New Haven crust is crispy, you can't fold it, it cracks), only uses the now-traditional red sauce, reduced the sauce, increased the cheese (Red NH pies only come with Parmesan and Romano. You have to ask for Mozzarella to get Mozzarella) and started piling on the toppings) and calling it New York style.

If you had to pick one thing as the emblematic food of CT...it'd be the New Haven white clam pie.




If they wanted to stick with the hamburger thing to avoid the New Haven/NY pizza fights (This is a real thing, oddly. CT, particularly Southern CT, disparages NY pizza. NYC claims they invented pizza (10 years later!) and NH isn't real pizza.), they chose oddly...Louis Lunch in New Haven is also the birthplace of the hamburger. They don't steam their burgers though...they grill them in cast-iron like they have from day one. Served on white toast with your choice of cheese, tomato and onions.



Edit: You can't tell, Nutmeggers are very vocal and passionate about their food. CT produces an inordinately-large number of top-quality chefs for a state its size. New Haven and Hartford have long been where you go to test your restaurant concept before paying Manhattan rents. So we're used to good food and argumentative about who has the best...I could start an argument over hot dogs: If I asked where the best hot dog in CT is, we'd get 15 answers and they're all legitimate. My money is on Saint's in Southington. Someone else would argue for Doogie's in Manchester. And so on.