There’s an old saying in the pizza world: there’s always mushroom for improvement. And right now, Connecticut is learning that lesson the hard way, with a slice of humble pie that probably tastes a little stale. For the past couple of years, the Nutmeg State has been absolutely desperate to convince the rest of America that it, not New York, is the true pizza capital of the nation. There were billboards. There were highway signs. There was a taxpayer-funded advertising blitz that tried its best to make people believe that Connecticut’s pizza scene could hang with the big boys. But according to a new poll, all that effort has dried up like a gas-station slice left under a heat lamp for six hours. Maine Lobster Now, a seafood company that apparently also has strong opinions about pizza, crunched the numbers from Google reviews across all fifty states and declared New York the real United States pizza champion. Connecticut, meanwhile, made a decidedly floppy landing at No. 16, which is not exactly the stuff of tourism commercials. To make things even more embarrassing, the state landed behind Texas, Oregon, and Missouri—places you might associate with barbecue, craft beer, and the Gateway Arch, but certainly not with legendary pizza. It was a harsh reality for a state that had spent months bragging that its slices were superior to New York’s.
You have to give Connecticut credit for one thing, though: they are not backing down without a fight. When the survey results came out, state officials responded with the kind of defiance usually reserved for championship coaches after a tough loss. Morgan Nyerick, the Director of Connecticut Statewide Marketing and Tourism, told The Post that they were not about to eat their words. “Not a chance,” she said, adding that they’d be eating another slice of Connecticut pizza instead. She had a point, sort of. She also reminded everyone that Connecticut had put “Welcome to Connecticut, Home of the Pizza Capital of the US” on its highway signs, which is a pretty bold move for a state that just ranked sixteenth in a national pizza poll. “We’re pretty committed at this point,” she admitted, and honestly, there is something almost admirable about that kind of stubbornness. She even extended an olive branch—or maybe a breadstick—to Maine Lobster Now, saying they would be happy to show the surveyors around and introduce them to some real Connecticut pizza. It was gracious, if completely unapologetic, and it showed that Connecticut’s pizza pride is not going to crumble just because of a few numbers. After all, this is a state that waged an all-out pizza war on New York in 2024, putting up billboards in Manhattan and Brooklyn with rage-inducing messages like “Connecticut Pizza Wins. NYC Takes The L” and “The Nation’s Best Pizza. Not You, New York.” Those billboards were part of a campaign from the Connecticut Office of State Marketing and Tourism, and they were designed to get under New York’s skin. It seems the only thing they succeeded in doing was giving everyone a good laugh once the rankings came out.
And the rankings are pretty brutal. New York came out on top, with 43.05 percent of its statewide Google reviews being positive. That is a solid number, especially when you consider how many pizza places there are in New York and how opinionated New Yorkers can be. New Jersey came in second with 39 percent, which probably hurts Connecticut even more because Connecticut loves to argue with New Jersey almost as much as it loves to argue with New York. Rhode Island took third place with 36.26 percent, proving that there is something in the water in New England when it comes to pizza. But Connecticut? Just 29.20 percent customer satisfaction. That is more than ten points behind New York and somehow behind Wisconsin and Utah. Wisconsin at least has cheese, so that makes sense. Utah? That is a mystery nobody can explain. Even Missouri, a state known for toasted ravioli and not much else, cracked the top ten. For Connecticut, this was a bad look, especially after all the trash talk. The state is home to New Haven’s beloved apizza, a style of thin-crust, coal-fired pizza with a devoted cult following and a legitimate claim to American pizza history. But apparently, statewide pizza reviews are not as strong as New Haven’s reputation suggests. And Connecticut shouldn’t feel too lonely in its misery, because Illinois, the home of Chicago deep dish, also did poorly, landing in nineteenth place with just 27.23 percent positive reviews. That is what you get when you put a casserole in a pizza box, according to New York pizza purists. But for Connecticut, the company in the basement is not exactly comforting.
New York pizza makers, unsurprisingly, were absolutely delighted by the results. For them, this was less of a surprise and more of a confirmation of what they had been saying all along. Michael Vendome, the owner of Fermento in the West Village, was practically bursting with pride. “It’s 100 percent true and 100 percent accurate,” he said. “I don’t think any other state is even close to messing with us when it comes to pizza. We’re the top dogs.” Vendome pointed out that New York is home to the most innovative pizza guys in the country, with different shops serving up completely different styles, shapes, and flavors. His own place specializes in a 72-hour fermentation period, which sounds more like a science experiment than a pizza dough recipe, but the results speak for themselves. And the beauty of New York, he said, is that you can walk down the block from a place like his and find a classic, foldable, greasy New York slice. You can get a Sicilian in one neighborhood, a Margherita in another, a clam pie in yet another, and you can get it all within the span of a few subway stops. There is no other state where you can find all those styles done well, let alone done great. Vendome was emphatic that New York has the best people making pizza, the most passionate and the best, and he believes there is a reason why most of the best pizzas in America come from New York. It is not luck. It is obsession, competition, and decades of tradition that keeps pushing the bar higher.
Michael Ayoub, the chef and owner of Fornino in Brooklyn, had a similar reaction, though he was a little more theatrical about it. Ayoub, who is celebrating twenty-four years of his business, said he could have told anyone that New York is the best in the country without needing a survey. “They didn’t have to do all this type of investigation if they had called me up first,” he laughed. “I would have saved somebody a lot of trouble.” When asked about Connecticut’s attempts to claim the pizza crown, Ayoub channeled his mother’s wisdom, saying that if you have nothing nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all. But then he paused, smiled, and said, “But I’ll just say this: Tsk, tsk, tsk.” It was the kind of response that perfectly sums up the New York pizza attitude, a mix of confidence, condescension, and a little bit of theatrical contempt. Ayoub theorized that the sheer amount of pizza shops in New York, combined with the incredible variety of styles, has created a competitive spirit that forces every chef to keep getting better. In a city where a tourist can pick a pizza place at random and still get a decent slice, the bar is incredibly high. You cannot rest on your laurels because the pizzeria two blocks away is experimenting with new flour, new ovens, new techniques, and new flavor combinations. That pressure cooker environment produces the best pizza in the country, and the survey numbers just confirmed what every New Yorker already knew in their heart of hearts. Connecticut can have its billboards and highway signs, but it cannot have the title.
So where does this leave Connecticut? Still defiant, still committed, and still insisting that the survey is wrong. Nyerick made it clear that New York can celebrate its ranking while Connecticut happily celebrates its own pizza, and she even invited the folks at Maine Lobster Now to come down and see for themselves. It is a nice gesture, though it feels a little like a restaurant that just got a bad review offering the critic a free meal to change their mind. But you have to admire the resilience. Pizza is personal, and rankings are subjective. The truth is that there is plenty of great pizza in Connecticut, just as there is plenty of great pizza in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and even Missouri, apparently. But if the goal was to prove that Connecticut is the pizza capital of the nation, the survey suggests there is still some work to be done. Maybe the billboards should have been a little more persuasive. Maybe the highway signs should have been backed up with more positive Google reviews. Or maybe, just maybe, Connecticut should stop trying to tear down New York and focus on what makes its own pizza special, like New Haven’s apizza, which has been quietly winning over pizza lovers for generations. There’s still mushroom for improvement, after all. And in the meantime, New York will keep slicing, keep folding, and keep serving up the best pizza in the country, according to the polls, the pizzerias, and the people who actually live there. Connecticut might not like it, but the proof is in the dough.
