July 29th, 2017
New Haven, CT
If you’re a pizza person, you’ve most certainly heard of Pepe’s and Sally’s on Wooster street. If you’re really familiar with New Haven (or have ever heard us talk about pizza), you probably also know the pizza greats BAR and Modern. We’ve also mentioned a few “New Haven style” pizzerias throughout the country (see: this and this). We pretty much consider ourselves New Haven pizza experts at this stage.
Well, we are here to tell you that there are other pizza places in New Haven, off the beaten path, that rank up there pretty high with our favorites (Pepe’s and BAR). One of these is Roseland, which somehow didn’t make the 2017 list. The second is Ernie’s.
Ernie’s isn’t located too far from the famous Wooster Street, but somehow we had never heard of it until this list came out, even after living in New Haven for 5 years. We would venture up Whalley Ave for brunch or to hit the farmer’s market, but never for pizza. We were really missing out. Ernie’s has been around since 1971 and makes some really great pizza. It is currently operated by Ernie’s son, Pat.
This was actually our second attempt to get to Ernie’s. On our first try, we showed up on a Sunday for lunch. We didn’t think to check the hours, but similar to Roseland, Ernie’s doesn’t open until later on Sundays (3 pm). Whoops. We learned our lesson and came back here on a Saturday instead. We went with our regular New Haven order: plain tomato pie (with grated cheese, of course!).
The only downside was that we had to wait a while for the pizza to come out, and the restaurant wasn’t even busy. It’s hard to imagine what the wait would have been like if the restaurant was packed. Although, we would have waited even longer to even get a table at Pepe’s! We’d recommend taking advantage of the restaurant’s call-ahead policy so that your pizza is ready when you get there.
The crust on the pizzas at Ernie’s is a little different than Pepe’s or Sally’s. It’s slightly thicker, but it still gets that really nice char on the bottom. Also, it’s circular. The crust recipe is apparently a family secret. The sauce is nice and sweet and because the crust is a bit thicker, there is a lot of it. We loved it and wished we had discovered Ernie’s back in the days that we lived in New Haven.
On a side note, we came across this awesome pizza list the other day and it probably is one of the most accurate lists of the best pizzerias in the country that we’ve seen (according to our tastes, of course). Paulie Gee’s may not have made our list of the top pizzas in Brooklyn, but at least they put it next to Lucali, which certainly deserves to be on there. And we have to give Paulie Gee credit for his topping variety. Pepe’s is on it, as is Antico in Atlanta and Apizza Scholls in Portland, OR, which are two of our favorites that don’t seem to make it on to other lists. Also, they picked out our favorite deep dish in Chicago (Pequod’s). They really just missed Di Fara.
We haven’t been to Delancy in Seattle, but that pizza looks AMAZING. Why is that not on the Daily Meal list?? There are two on the list here that are also on the Daily Meal lists that we haven’t been to yet, so stay tuned for if we agree with those as well.
Also, according to this article, Pizzeria Beddia is opening a new storefront in Philly later this year (after closing their current location just a few days ago)! Who wants to come with us to check that out later this year?!
To visit:
Ernie’s Pizzeria
1279 Whalley Ave
New Haven, CT 06515
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