Established in 1934, Zuppardi’s is one of the heavyweights of New Haven, Connecticut’s pizza scene. That storied town has given birth to Pepe’s Pizzeria Napolitano (est.1925) Modern Appiza (est.1934) Sally’s Apizza (est.1938) as well as newcomer Bar (est.1996)

Each restaurant has its adherents with respective eaters claiming that their favorite is the only one-true-pizzeria.

New Haven pies are known for their deep-char on the crust resulting from a lengthy ride through a coal-burning oven. Some pizzerias in that town no longer burn that precious black fuel resulting in much scorn and ridicule from old school locals. Unfortunately Zuppardi’s is now in that camp. Perhaps the fact that they’re actually across the river in West Haven affords them some sort of reprieve?

An obvious comparison point would be the barbecue pits of Central Texas where some of the modern pit bosses now run gas smokers instead of building an honest fire out of oak logs.

Zuppardi’s place on the pizza map is secured via their freshly shucked Little Neck clam pie that features copious amounts of garlic riding the briny clams for all they’re worth. Fresh clam juice flows like the Mississippi.

They also make a fennel sausage pie that is so popular they roll through half a ton of handmade sausage every single month. Make sure and ask for a liberal dousing of hot cherry peppers to be sprinkled all over your apizza, that’s how the West Haven regulars do it.

We’re complete marks for homemade sausage, that’s why we started our Texas Hot Guts Project years ago; handmade Texas sausage was dying out and we would be damned if we let that happen so we bought the equipment and started churning out fresh sausage every chance we got.

Zuppardi’s celebrated their 80th birthday on December 7th of last year and will be celebrating by driving their brand spanking new pizza truck from Connecticut to New Orleans this weekend March 28-29th 2015 for the website Roadfood’s New Orleans Food Festival, it’s the 7th one in a row.

They’ll be parked in the French Market hard up against the Mississippi River.

Saturday March 28th 2015 11am-7pm

Sunday March 29th 2015 11am-6pm

Admission is free