There is a “new’ style of Pizza that is about to sweep the country which is not new at all. New Haven, Connecticut roughly 75 miles northeast of New York City, is the birthplace of one of America’s oldest pizza styles: an irresistible, century-old tradition whose charred, blistered crusts have captivated palates since the early 1900s. On Wooster Street in the old Italian section of the city, the irresistible, smoky aroma of coal-fired ovens wafts between world-famous pizzerias, a sensory trademark of the signature apizza (pronounced “ah-beets”).

Different from New York or Chicago style pizza this Northeastern staple is now spreading across the country. Emerging in the 1920s, this New Haven based thin-crust, coal-fired pizza blended Neapolitan traditions with local innovations in a working-class city known for its industrial heritage. The charred, chewy crust—baked in high-heat brick ovens and often topped with no-refrigeration essentials like tomatoes and garlic—reflected both cultural roots and practical demands of the era.

The style’s origins trace to New Haven’s Little Italy neighborhood, primarily Wooster Street, where waves of Italian immigrants settled in the early 1900s. They brought Naples recipes but adapted them to local resources, creating apizza as a distinct American variant. By the 1920s, pizzerias emerged, producing oblong pies focused on texture and char from coal ovens.

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In 1980 when I was the Northeastern Regional Political director for Governor Ronald Reagan’s campaign for president, I brought my candidate for a tour of the pizza parlors and Italian bakeries on Wooster Street. I am not certain, but it may have been the first time Ronald Reagan had a cannoli.

Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana holds special notoriety. Italian immigrant Frank Pepe started with a pushcart in 1925 selling simple tomato pies, then transformed a small bakery. His coal-fired oven delivered the iconic blistered, chewy crust. Early pies featured heavy tomato sauce, grated pecorino, garlic, and oregano—no mozzarella. These modest masterpieces drew lines and ignited Wooster Street's reputation as a pizza mecca.

Pepe’s vision extended to toppings, most famously the white clam pie (invented in the 1960s): fresh clams, garlic, olive oil, and grated cheese—a light nod to New Haven’s coastal roots and Italian seafood traditions. Widely hailed as one of America’s best pizzas, it showcases how simple, fresh ingredients create extraordinary bites.

Over decades, Pepe’s has preserved original recipes, oven techniques, and family ownership—still guided by Frank Pepe’s grandchildren. They use the same wetter, longer-fermenting dough for richer flavor, hand-selected premium ingredients (imported Italian tomatoes, Sardinian pecorino Romano, fresh-shucked clams), and custom coal-fired ovens for that signature crispy-chewy, perfectly charred crust with smoky depth. Uncompromising quality—simple, high-end components executed flawlessly—turns each bite into enduring craftsmanship, not mass production.

Sally’s Apizza, founded in 1938 by Frank Pepe’s nephew Salvatore “Sally” Consiglio, emerged as a direct rival on the same Wooster Street block. It gained fame for slightly sweeter sauce and generous toppings, sparking lifelong local debates despite subtle differences from Pepe’s. Sally’s pies feature irregular shapes and intense char from brick ovens.

The rivalry peaked in the 1970s with legendary lines, word-of-mouth buzz, and celebrity fans like Sinatra (who reportedly shipped pies to Las Vegas). Family-run until late 2017, it was sold to a hospitality group for cautious expansion while preserving core traditions. The “Chairman of the Board” was also known to also fly pies into Palm Springs from Grimaldi’s under the Brooklyn Bridge.

The New Haven Pizzerias, unlike chains, these pies prioritize quality over quantity, meant to be savored hot from the oven in a dimly lit, authentic atmosphere that draws pilgrims from afar.

Modern Apizza, established in 1934 on State Street away from Wooster Square, rounds out the Holy Trinity. Originally opened by Tony Tolli and later under different owners, it uses an oil-fueled brick oven for a crisp-yet-pliable crust. Praised for shorter waits, it’s a local favorite. Bold combos like the Italian Bomb (sausage, pepperoni, bacon, onions, peppers, mushrooms, garlic) show how the style handles hearty toppings without overwhelming the base.

Resisting large-scale growth, Modern maintains one neighborhood-gem location with checkered tablecloths and loyal fans. Named Pizzeria of the Year by Pizza Today in 2023, it ranked #1 in recent Connecticut polls (e.g., 2025 CT Office of Tourism Pizza Capital Trail, ahead of Pepe’s #2 and Sally’s #3) and often edges out rivals in national taste tests for balanced flavors. Founded amid the Great Depression, it symbolizes the scene’s resilience through urban renewal threats.

Pepe’s, Sally’s, and Modern form the trifecta defining New Haven style, drawing worldwide tourists. Debates rage—Pepe’s for origin, Sally’s for sauce, Modern for accessibility—but all embody charred perfection.

Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana, the most expansion-minded of the trio, has grown to 17 locations across the East Coast (with an 18th slated for Westport, CT in summer 2026), stretching from Massachusetts to Florida. Despite faithful attempts to replicate coal-fired ovens and recipes, the push has faltered a bit—especially in southern spots like Plantation and Delray Florida—where inconsistencies in crust char, excessive flop, and diluted flavor undermine the original Wooster Street magic.

Some have attributed Pepe’s failure to recreate there Wooster Street masterpiece to localities whose local health ordinances don’t allow for an 800-degree oven. This requires that the Pizzaiola to bake the pie longer causing excessive crunch on the bottom.

Yelp and TripAdvisor ratings for Frank Pepe’s hover in the mid-3s to low-4s, with complaints about flavor-batch inconsistencies, soggier larger pies, and overall dilution at scale. Regional humidity, water differences, and higher volume make crisp, charred perfection hard to replicate. Many reviews praise the char and toppings as solid regionally, but consensus holds expansion has cost some soul. That said when I visited Frank Pepe’s outlet in Yonkers, New York. I thought the pizza easily rivaled the Wooster Street standard.

But now, a bold new contender is flipping the script: Ah-Beetz New Haven Pizza, a franchise powerhouse poised to take this century-old style nationwide without a single compromise on quality or authenticity has emerged.

Founded by New Haven native Nicholas Laudano from a family recipe dating to 1976, Ah-Beetz (phonetic for “apizza”) launched in Delray Beach, Florida, in 2017, dedicated to recreating charred, crispy-yet-chewy crusts and bold flavors. When lines went out of the door and around the block, Ah Beretz moved to large quarters in the same shopping plaza. Soon Ah Beetz had outlets in Royal Palm, West Palm Beach, North Palm Beach, Port Saint Lucie, as well as Marietta, GA, with rumors about a Fort Lauderdale location in the air.

What sets Ah-Beetz apart is its fierce ability to sweep the nation without sacrificing quality or authenticity—a commitment to perfection in every pie. They fire coal-fired ovens at blistering temps, ferment dough for days to unlock deep tangy complexity, and source toppings obsessively: fresh-shucked clams, imported Italian tomatoes, punchy Sardinian pecorino Romano. No shortcuts, no dilutions—every pie delivers signature snap-crisp char and smoky depth exploding in each bite, true to Wooster Street roots.

Hopefully, unlike the expansions that crumbled under the strain of scale, Ah-Beetz rises victorious through rigorous, hands-on oversight—every coal-fired oven blazing with the exact same intensity, every crust achieving flawless, blistering char, just like Wooster Street.

For those who will never visit New Haven or those who have never sampled New Haven style pizza, their best chance could emerge from the Ah Beetz brand.

“I like a good martini.

Two at the very most.

Three—I’m under the table.

Four—I’m under my host.”

-Dorothy Parker

I’ve never been much of a drinker. Red wine makes me sleepy and brown liquors give me a terrible headache—but thanks to Richard Nixon, I became a fan of the perfect martini.

The origins of the martini are disputed. The name may derive from the Italian Martini brand of vermouth. Others suggest it evolved from a cocktail called the Martinez served in the early 1860s at the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco, which locals frequented before taking an evening ferry to the nearby town of Martinez, California.

I acquired my taste for a dry vodka martini at the Saddle River, New Jersey home of former President Richard Nixon. During the 1980 presidential campaign, while serving as the Northeast Regional Political Director for Governor Ronald Reagan’s campaign, one of my duties was to make a pilgrimage to Nixon’s modest home in the New York suburbs of New Jersey, to give him a weekly briefing on the status of the campaign.

The old man had a voracious appetite for political intelligence, as well as gossip. In our briefings, the man who had served as our 37^th President, was reserved, buttoned down, and all business. Every session included rapid-fire questions about polling, debate preparation, election day operations, and the like.

I initially found that President Nixon was very forward looking. While it was easy to get him to talk about rising talent in the Republican Party or who he viewed among the current-day Democrats as a threat, it was virtually impossible to get him to talk about the past. “Always look forward; never look back,” he would famously say.

After our “business” was finished, he would invariably ask me if I “wanted a Silver Bullet?”—which is what he called the perfect martini. Although he regularly preferred gin and initially scoffed at my choice of vodka, after I explained that I had gotten stinking drunk on gin and tonic in my teens and couldn’t even abide the smell of it, he agreed to mix us both one of his legendary martinis using vodka. Famous for his legendary memory, he would never again ask me my preference of vodka over gin but would automatically mix a couple of ice-cold vodka martinis after our “briefing session” was over.

The fact is, Dick Nixon made a mean martini and was quite proud of his martini mixing skills, and he was quite precise about his recipe. The whole thing had a ritual to it. First, he explained, you must chill a couple of martini glasses in the freezer. Then, you had to follow the precise steps enumerated below. Above all, his “Silver Bullet” required an extremely vigorous shake of a sterling silver or aluminum cocktail shaker. “If there are not tiny chards of ice floating on the surface of the martini after you pour it—well, then, that means you’ve fucked it up!” he would growl.

Undoubtedly Nixon honed his mixology skills tending bar at “Nick’s Hamburger Stand,” an impromptu canteen put together by the enterprising Navy lieutenant for war-weary service members passing through Nixon’s post in the South Pacific in World War II.

Dick served up booze and burgers. Nixon served at Guadalcanal and later at Green Island as officer in charge of the South Pacific Combat Air Transport Command, supervising C-47 cargo operations. Lieutenant Commander Nixon was legendary for his ability to acquire “hooch” for the boys.

Generally speaking, Nixon was not introspective. He hated to talk about the past, always looking forward instead. It was hard to get him to talk about Ike, McCarthy, JFK, LBJ, and the deep secrets he held close for so many decades. But after two drinks the old man became absolutely loquacious and would reveal astonishing things, cloaked in Nixonian intrigue, of course.

It was after his second martini that when I asked the former President, “Who really killed John F. Kennedy?” that he told me that, “The Warren Commission was the biggest goddam hoax in American history” and when I pressed him further said, “Let me put it this way; Lindon and I both wanted to be President—but I wasn’t willing to kill for it.” That statement was the impetus for my New York Times Best Selling Book, The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ.

“More than one of these and you want to beat your wife,” Nixon reportedly told his then-26-year-old assistant John P. Sears. When I told the former President how great his martini was, he admitted that he had borrowed the recipe from no less a legend than British Prime Minister and wartime leader Winston Churchill.

Little did I know that years later, Nixon and I would share more than our stout republicanism; we would both be the recipient of full and unconditional presidential pardons.

On the day of my arraignment on the entirely fabricated charges filed against me by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his failed attempt to pressure me to testify falsely against President Donald Trump, I recorded a video for the Daily Caller, revealing Nixon’s martini recipe.

Silver Bullet Recipe

Ingredients

·      One (1) bottle of small to medium sized green olives with pimento

·      Dry Vermouth of choice

·      Fine Russian vodka (or Tanqueray gin, as Nixon preferred)

Assembly

·      Drain the brine from the bottle of olives, leaving olives intact

·      Refill olive bottle with water; shake vigorously; drain water completely

·      Refill olive bottle with dry Vermouth; refrigerate the bottle

·      Chill a traditional martini glass

·      Fill a cocktail shaker with ice, preferably a vintage Tiffany hammered silver art deco shaker

·      Fill the shaker with vodka (or gin, according to preference) until the ice is covered

·      Shake VERY vigorously—if there are not tiny shards of ice floating on the surface of the Silver Bullet, you have not shaken the mixture vigorously enough

·      Pour the mixture into the chilled martini glass

·      Add one Vermouth-drenched olive from the jar

·      Return the Vermouth olive jar to the refrigerator for use with your next Silver Bullet

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Mangia! With Roger Stone is the newest section of my Substack blog Stone Cold Truth, and it is where I post food (and sometimes drink) related content — like recipes.

While I plan to publish something here every Sunday, I got a bit sidetracked and missed a few weeks after publishing my mother’s Sunday Gravy recipe:

After publication, I had many people reach out about their experience making my family recipe.

posted pictures of his Sunday Gravy on Truth Social, noting that they he added some mushrooms, and poured it over some penne pasta.

reached out after making the repipe, stating:

Made your Mom's sauce, Roger. Good stuff! Nothing like the Abruzzese sauce I grew up with. Dick Nixon stopped by and said it was great.

left a very nice message:

Thanks Roger, for that "gravy" recipe! My grandparents were from Sicily, settled in Trenton, NJ, and called it sauce. Well the grandparents actually called it, what sounded like "sulcul" or something like that. I've made my grandma's but am certainly going to try yours! Love your food, dress philosophy and especially your politics! Thanks so much!

My friends at wrote:

This is amazing Roger!! My fav food is Sunday Spaghetti - ITALIAN! Let's go! 🎉

In this week’s addition, I wanted to share another of my mother’s recipes.

Every good Italian knows their way around a meatball, and like the Sunday Gravy recipe I published in the last edition of Mangia!, every family makes them a little different.

This is the recipe my mother followed — which is what my family continues to make to this day.

Pretty much any day of the week, you can find a couple of these in my refrigerator and/or freezer.

I generally serve them with a generous pour of my Sunday gravy or any other good red sauce, and sometimes plop some ricotta cheese, or freshly grated parmigiano reggiano, right on top —

Sometimes I will eat them with some pasta, and other times just on their own — you really can’t go wrong.

Now on to the recipe:

Italian style meatballs

Yield: 18 to 25 meatballs

Total: 1 hr 30 min

Prep: 40 min

Cook: 45 min

Ingredients:

Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVO)

2 tsp Kosher salt

1 large yellow and 1 large red onion, ¼-inch dice

1 ½ pound ground sirloin

1 ½ pound ground veal

1 ½ pound ground pork

½ pound ground mild Italian sausage (no casing)

6 cloves fresh minced garlic

6 large eggs (beaten)

2-1/2 cups Italian bread crumbs

½ cup of Panko bread crumbs

1 cup grated Parmesan

1 cup grated Romano

1 cup grated Asiago

½ cup fresh parsley finely minced

2 tbsp oregano

1 tbsp cup basil

1 tbsp thyme

1 tbsp fine chopped rosemary

1 tsp fresh ground black pepper

1 cup water

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and place 9x11 Pyrex baking dish partially filled with either chicken broth or water on lowest rack.

2. Place ground meats, breadcrumbs, parsley, cheeses, salt, pepper, oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, whipped eggs and 1 cup of water into large mixing bowl.

3. Pour EVO into large skillet/saucepan enough to coat entire pan, bring to medium/high heat and add onions/garlic. Sauté onions/garlic (onions should be soft and slightly brown) Allow sautéed onions/garlic to cool.

4. Add onions and garlic to the large mixing bowl of meats and hand mix ingredients lightly don’t compress the meatball mix tightly.

5. Coat large, cooled skillet/saucepan with EVO. Using your hands form the mixture into 2+ inch meatballs (mix should be somewhat wet if not add small amounts of water and remix lightly with hands) In batches carefully place the meatballs in the EVO coated skillet/saucepan.

6. Fill but don’t crowd cold skillet/saucepan with meatballs then bring to medium-high heat, as oil begins to cook meatballs very carefully with either tongs, spatula or a fork roll the meatballs in place so that they brown evenly on all sides (about 10 minutes).

7. With the meatball mix being somewhat wet gently squeeze the meatballs with tongs to work out flat spots when rolling in place. Remove meatballs from skillet/saucepan when they have light brown outer coating on all sides, place meatballs onto nonstick baking pan with elevated wire rack.

8. Allow skillet/saucepan to cool before adding additional meatballs (Do not add meatballs to heated/hot pan one at a time) Always add meatballs to a cooled skillet/saucepan then apply heat for browning.

9. Place baking sheet with meatballs into 350-degree oven for 30 to 40 minutes, at the 25 minute mark cut open one of the meatballs for cook time inspection.

10. Remove baking sheet from oven, allow to cool for 5 minutes, if needed roll cooked meatballs over paper towel to remove excess fat/grease. At this point meatballs can be added to tomato sauce for serving or placed into 1-gallon ziplok bags for freezer storage.

And there you have it: Italian meatballs.

Mangia!

If you end up cooking up this recipe, let me know how you like it — or better yet, send a picture of the finished product to me via private message here on Substack. I may include your picture in a future post!

Welcome to ‘Mangia! With Roger Stone’, a brand new section right here on Stone Cold Truth.

In Italian, mangia means "to eat." So this is where I will post family recipes and other food and drink related content every Sunday!

To start things off, I can’t think of a better recipe to share than my world-famous Sunday Gravy — a recipe passed down to me by my late mother, who would have turned 100 in September.

I grew up in the Connecticut suburbs of New York City in a working-class family that’s half-Italian.

Every Sunday, my mother would rise early to assemble her “Sunday Gravy,” which is what Italian Americans in Philadelphia, much of New Jersey and enclaves of Connecticut called your basic red sauce.

The recipe is precise and the specific list of ingredients inviolable, or the entire production is doomed from the start.

The centerpiece ingredients of this Italian American staple are canned imported San Marzano tomatoes.

San Marzano is not a brand of tomato, but rather a type of plum tomato from a specific region of Italy.

No other canned imported tomatoes will do. Be vigilant about tomatoes labeled “San Marzano Style” tomatoes because such an annotation on the can means someone is selling you fugazi.

I repeat: only real San Marzano tomatoes will do.

Now, to the recipe . . .

First, take a medium-size yellow onion and dice it. Sauté the onion on a medium flame in olive oil specifically labeled “For Sautéing & Grilling” until translucent.

If you intend to make this a hearty meat sauce, this is where you add the meat. I prefer a mix of equal parts ground beef, ground veal, and ground pork.

Take three large cloves of minced garlic and add to the pan. Note: garlic has a lower burning point than onions and should only be added when the onions are translucent, but before they brown. Be careful not to burn the garlic.

Add two cans of whole San Marzano plum tomatoes, including the juice. Using a spatula, crush and break apart the tomatoes.

Add two-and-a-half tablespoons of oregano, one tablespoon of mixed Italian spices (basil, marjoram, thyme, rosemary, sage). Add coarse black pepper and salt to taste. Remember the tomatoes are naturally salty, so be cautious.

Let this mixture cook at a low to medium heat, as it will need to thicken. Add one can of imported tomato paste and an equal size can of water. Continue cooking. The flavors only meld after several hours cooking at a low heat, being careful not to burn the gravy nor to allow it to become too thick.

And there you have it: Sunday Gravy.

Best served over rigatoni, ziti, penne, or a thin #11 spaghetti.

Mangia!

If you end up cooking up this recipe, let me know how you like it — or better yet, send a picture of the finished product to me via private message here on Substack. I may include your picture in a future post!

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