2023 is the year I sealed my relocation from CT to KY. In the past 46 years, I've never lived more than 120 miles from Wooster Street. I grew up in CT. I like pizza, and I've eaten a lot of it. Now I'm more than 830 miles from Wooster Street.
I counted 23 places I ate CT pizza this past year, during 7 returns from KY to empty & consolidate storage spaces, shed belongings, load a relocation cube, pack my car, set up a new home...a little more each time. I'll be back at some date uncertain for my final thing-related trip.
In the past year, I stayed pretty much in north Bridgeport, Black Rock, and Westport, with my dearest friends. My storage units were in Orange & then consolidated into Milford.
While I still went to New Haven, Hamden, and East Haven for medical appointments, live music, art, bicycling, and beach yoga, my center of gravity moved meaningfully.
The westward shift resulted in my eating much more pizza in Fairfield, Bridgeport, Milford, Derby, and West Haven, but I also pursued notable recommendations in North Haven, Wallingford, and Cheshire, and all were worthwhile.
22 of the 23 pizza places were good-to-much better. Half of those were excellent or damn close. There were some visits that fell below historical norms or peaks. And I've got at least 10 places I've enjoyed in the past that I didn't get to in 2023. As a turn of phrase, I think there are 20 "Top 10" pizza places in the geographic area where I spent my time.
My capacity for pleasure from pizza remains high. With that as foundation, here's what's probably not expected given the last couple pages of this thread: 10 of my dozen pizzas from Commerce Drive in Fairfield were very-to-thoroughly enjoyable. None were bad. Not even close
I ate 4 pies from 2 takeouts from Sally's, which I'd resisted for a while, because I expected to be disappointed. They were fine. The most recent was an early November Garden Special that was so good that I never left the parking lot, but instead watched a WBB game on my phone later on the same day that the MBB team beat Indiana.
People complained when Sally's was run like a private club that played obvious favorites in the past, and now they complain when it's run like a business. Both complaints have enough merit to be made, but that's not the whole story.
The fresh clam pie that I had was a freebie because they'd screwed up and forgotten to put in my friend's order, and offered the comped pie as a 'make good,' and the clam represented another mess up that resulted in a pie that hadn't been picked up. My friend said the place was disorganized, but all 3 pizzas (tomato pie and my friend's mootz w/sausage & mushroom choice) that night were surprisingly quite tasty, definitely not garbage. If somebody felt that way, I'm sorry they had a bad experience, but I'm not going to criticize or attack them personally. I'll admit that I'm not yet interested in eating Sally's pizza in a nicely appointed dining room. Maybe if they recreated the Wooster Street men's room, I'd reconsider.
As to Fairfield Pepe's, I'd kind of written it off as "capable of good but never 'transcendent'," but after I'd moved a decade ago from Bridgeport back to New Haven after 30 years away, that no longer mattered. My 2 visits to Pepe's were group gatherings with lots of pies ordered. The first time,I hosted my Fairfield County hosts, and they chose the pies. On my birthday, I was given the honor to order every pizza, from favorites to curiosities. While I think I could name somewhere else that could possibly-to-probably outdo the version of most served that night, that's no knock. There were no misfires, everybody was happy, and I finally got to try a couple I never tried. It's a good place to go with a 6-12 person bunch of friends.
Unless I forgot any, here's the list I could remember. In the upper left corner, I note having gone to the two competing top Trenton tomato pie brands. I liked.
