There were two white-tiled dining rooms, packed mainly with families sandwiched into high-backed booths. The line snaked out the door, but it moved.
An enormous sign beckoned from Wooster Street, the kind of thing that must look monstrous to little kids. It was a special thing,” says Kristin Marachi, a Fairfield, Conn., native who now lives in Acton. “We’d drive to New Haven every couple of months, wait in line for an hour, and then go in. I didn’t mind - the sponginess, akin to Ethiopian injera, sopped up that luscious sauce. The edges were blackened and crispy, but the middle was soggy. The sauce was delicious: fresh, sweet, pulpy. “You should sell some of those slices to people in line,” one bystander suggested. Twenty minutes later, a majestic silver tray appeared, draped with pizza cut into narrow rectangles. I planned to bring some home, so I concurred. I’d learn this later.) Then I requested a large original tomato pie - their signature, dusted with grated cheese - which my waiter deemed reasonable for three. (Rookie mistake, because Pepe’s is known for Connecticut’s Foxon Park soda. A bowl of crisp, garlicky Caesar appeared forthwith. I felt so guilty occupying a table without food that I readily agreed. You should really get a salad, ma’am,” he suggested. I was missus’d and ma’amed by a sweet-faced lad with a thick Midwestern accent. You know: near New York, part of the ambiance. I sank sheepishly into my seat.Īs a Pepe’s novice, I expected brusque service. “Right this way, ma’am,” he said, whisking me past the fray and escorting me to a prime patio table, a mere handrail from those salivating hordes - many of whom wielded strollers. “Does anyone have two people? Just two people?” he pleaded. A chipper gent stood before us, hollering numbers.
When I arrived at the new location, tucked across from an eyebrow-threading place, a line snaked past an “outdoor” seating area and toward the mall’s mezzanine. It takes time to get it all right,” says Medford’s Hans Mayer, a Connecticut native who stood in line at the Chestnut Hill Pepe’s on its maiden weekend.
It just takes time, I think, to get the flavor character of the oven. “They have a ways to go with the charring on the bottom of the pizza. Which led me to wonder: Is the new Pepe’s on par with the original? Could they replicate the oven? (They promised they would.) Could they replicate the atmosphere? (The new branch is at the Shops at Chestnut Hill, a far cry from New Haven’s Wooster Street.) Most important: Could they create fresh memories for the uninitiated, or would this be a nostalgia act?
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