LESS FAMOUS... WHY?
You're motoring along New Haven's State Street on a brisk March Sunday afternoon when your darkest fears are realized. Its 1:30 p.m. and its too early. The neon lights are off. Modern Apizza's ovens are cold. Their sign says not open until 3 p.m..
Do you shout aloud? Openly weep? Meekly go home? Never!
You do what any pizza lover does, you cruise over to nearby Wooster Street, but hello -- there too Sally's, Pepe's and the Annex/Spot are also dormant at this time of day.
What does a deprived pizza hitter do in a case like this? Do we... wait? A dubious strategy.
No. You who are now muttering mild Italian curses under your breath as you drive past Pepe's. Lucille's beckons from across the street yet you pass by that venerable eatery. Then there, on the left, is ABATE Restaurant and Pizza, about 50 yards from Pepe's. Eh? what's this? The parking lot is packed.
Abate opened a small Branford restaurant which in a 1997 Coastline Pie Foray revealed great strength. They were turning out classics, and now here's Home Plate as it were, flourishing hard by Pepe's. One enters thinking I cant possibly get hurt in here. Also thinking, abate means subside or lessen, but in here Abate means the Abate family's name is on the line.
To our waitress we say There's just two of us: two non-smoking lads who tried to slip in some March golf but who wimped out in the windy low -40s gray day temperatures here in Connecticut. And surely, we should be in the Caribbean now, but were in your restaurant instead. And we desperately need high-end pie.
We order up a Large with the ConnectiCrust Standard Test items: peppers, mozzarella and sausage.
It is the same order we use to run tests on each competitor's pie. It how we keep even the Pie-Playing Field... It is one of the several yardsticks we employ in this line of work.
The thing arrives promptly and scores high on the Visuals: 16 of 20 possible, a thing of beauty. It's a vast Large even for two grown 200+ pound boys. The crust is beveled up and crunchy at the perimeter - none of your bogus West Hartford Harry's Pizza puffy air perimeter here.
The crust under the pie holds up very well, passing the Wedge Test (wherein the wedge is held at the outer edge and should it droop to where the sauce, peppers and meat slide off: failure). NO! Abate's passes this most demanding test!
The peppers are cooked to near perfection: sweet and cooked-through while retaining a classic green coloration. The mozza is mottled all over the product, yet not overloaded and thickly applied like so many street corner low-end varieties so commonplace in coarse and rude America nowadays. No it is, I must say, a judicious application of the rella cheese here on Wooster Street.
The sausage is a gentle meat mixture made on premises. For me, it is too mild to be on top of such a fine pizza. I be liking a bit more snap. Golfing adversary and pie man Tyler Miller of Manchester, (CT) is impressed with the unit and not deterred much by my sausage asides and commentary. It's quality sausage for sure but not of the same rich flavor school as Sally's or West Hartford's Luna (which is moving into Glastonbury in the old stationery store on Hebron Avenue, which is cause for people on the east side of the river to hold onto their real estate!!)
But in all, the product rates very high on the Flavor Scale, 16 of 20 possible, which is right up there with Connecticut's best. I nearly went to 17 here, but took off a point for the aforementioned sausage, which did not knock me over near enough.
If this column tested for the Surprise Factor then I do believe my golfing pal would give it a 20 in that department. Quoth he: You know I would never have thought to check into Abate. I bet most folks, except for local folks who know, wouldn't either.
He's right. The place is packed. The accents sound local -- no wide-eyed Ohioans are Golly Gee-whizzing in here. And Abate's does great business for a reason. Cheek by jowl alongside the Three Powers of Wooster Street, Abate clearly has delivered the goods for years. Otherwise they could not have prospered right next to the internationally acclaimed Pepe's and the Other Two Powers.
To the argument: Hey its like gas stations, put one on all four corners, each will do well, so Abates is doing well in the shadow of Pepe's and Sally's...To that I say Hey its not like you drink the Texaco, flat head.
There was a huge Sunday Italian buffet going on while we were there, and the folks here appear very well fed. We were in town seeking pizza. Our Large was so vast that, for the first time in memory, they had to actually put wheels on a couple of leftovers. Others may have turned tail and gone home, or waited until 3 p.m. for the Modern or one of the Powers to open, or gone Chinese or fast food, or zounds - here's a terrifying thought - committed Pizza Hut. Not for us: wannabe pizzaiouli. We had an immediate pizza need that required professional slaking.
Abate did surpass the need for quality fare on that fateful
too-lousy-to-hit-a-golf ball Sunday. Sure, we had the patience.
The mettle. The stuff. And yes... the daring to Take The Risk
to Try Something New. Okay. Okay. Call it courage. But hey, I'm
just doing my job.