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Sally's Apizza

237 Wooster St, New Haven, CT

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Sally's Apizza opened in 1938 in New Haven's Wooster Street Italian neighborhood, founded by Salvatore "Sally" Consiglio, a nephew of Frank Pepe who'd learned the coal-fired apizza craft directly within his uncle's kitchen before opening his own competing restaurant just down the same street. That direct family lineage back to Pepe's has made the ongoing rivalry between Sally's and Frank Pepe's one of the most storied regional pizza debates in the entire country, with both restaurants sitting within easy walking distance of each other on Wooster Street and each maintaining fiercely loyal, generations-deep customer bases who consider the question of which is better a genuinely serious local debate. Sally's has maintained the same coal-fired oven tradition as its uncle-founded rival, and the restaurant's tomato pie and mozzarella-topped classics have earned their own dedicated national following, including celebrity fans and frequent inclusion on national "best pizza in America" rankings alongside Pepe's. Sally's Apizza's combination of its direct family lineage to the founder of New Haven apizza itself and its decades-long, still-active rivalry with Frank Pepe's just down the same street has made it one of the most historically layered pizza destinations in the country, inseparable from the broader story of how the New Haven style came to exist at all.

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