Salvatore Carlino knows what it takes to make the perfect New York slice: He grew up in his parents’ pizza shop, Papa Leone, in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay, and now owns his own pizzeria, Lucia, with locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
So when a New York Times reporter called to inform him that a member of Congress planned to declare New Haven, Conn., and not New York City, the pizza capital of the United States on the House floor, Mr. Carlino’s response was swift.
“This has to be a prank call,” he said, insisting. Twice.
“Oh, no,” Frank Tuttolomondo, who owns Mama’s Too in Manhattan, said when he learned of the effort. “No way; they’re outta their minds.”
But in fact, Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut on Wednesday plans to read a statement into the Congressional Record that will declare New Haven to have “the best pizza in the country,” she said in a news release earlier this week. “It’s not even close.”
It keeps going. She will also call Connecticut “the pizza state.” Sorry, nutmeg.
Though the city’s chewy, charred pizza has long gained acclaim among pizza fans and locals, some in New York City, when informed of the planned declaration, said that it was no contest — their state was far more widely known as the home of the greatest pizza in the United States.
