Slice of life

Pizza, a Love Story

Crit

Spoiler alert! The most surprising thing--of many surprising things--I learned from this documentary of heart, head, and belly: The Spot is the original location from which Frank Pepe began (in the 1920s) selling pizza (and bread). Only after he sold enough pies to establish the business as a going concern did he buy the building where he and Filomela rented an upstairs apartment, as well as the building next door, and converted the downstairs to the world's biggest pizza restaurant. 

Those of you who know me as an Illinois boy by birth won't be surprised that I love Chicago-style pizza, though to any of my Wooster Square neighbors I will claim that this paragraph is the work of a hacker who reinstates it as fast as I can delete it. But there's no more point comparing brick-oven pie with Chicago-style than there is in asking the Sistine Chapel ceiling to slug it out with the Córdoba Mezquita. If what the Dominican Sisters taught me about God's omnipresence is even metaphorically accurate, it applies to all forms of genius, from the flat and oven-charred to the thick and chewy. But let's face it: in the years that remain to me I'll be eating a lot more pies from Pepe's than from Papa Del's, so I know which side my crust is oiled on.

All you really need to know is: if you love pizza, or if you love New Haven history, or if you love love, see this film, and maybe see it this week, because that may be the extent of its run, though the crowd that packed in to the screening I saw suggests that a 10-week run would remain profitable.

One last thing: either on the way in or the way out during my Illinois visit this July, I gotta check out this place, even though it's way off the path I beat in Chicago. It is apparently the most successful of a couple of dozen of New Haven-style apizza joints across the country.