New England Vacation Day 2

After an early night, we woke up at a decent hour and had coffee and bagels at home while playing with the dog before heading out on part two of our adventure. Ryan wanted to take us to Pepe's in New Haven, CT for authentic "Apizza". Luckily his neighbor informed us there was a Frank Pepe's at the Mohengan Sun casino (Uncasville, CT) about 90 minutes closer . . . cutting 3 hours off our drive and allowing for much more sightseeing along the way.

They use a coal fired oven for their baking here. It makes for a tasty crust!

We started off with a speciality soda, Foxon Park Soda, served at Pepe's since 1925.

The White Birch had a light flavor but was kind of medicinal. The smell reminded us of a gum like Wrigleys. As for the root beer, Ryan said it had a very rooty flavor but Aaron found it too sweet. 

And then on to our meal. We had the White Clam Pizza (we are in New England after all)

and the Original Tomato Pie w/Mozzarella - adding some fresh roasted red peppers as well. The clams on the pizza were chewy but still tasty. As this was a thin crust pizza it was too thin to really pick up and eat. The tomato pie was most excellent and the roasted peppers were really good.

Aaron also requested  a side of anchovies (imported from Italy no less). These were not overly salty like anchovies can be.

After all that good food, it was off to explore Connecticut.

We drove through New London and Mystic (but no Mystic Pizza), stopping to geocache and explore the coast as the whim took us. One of those whims was to indulge in Rita's Ice Custard.

They take various flavors of custard as well as Italian ices and you can layer or blend them for your own favorite concoction. We tried a few different types.

Then it was back to Providence for (?!?!?) more pizza (We wanted to compare "New-Haven style Apizza" to Rhode Island's "grilled" style - the "first" one being coal fired, the other being "wood" grilled.) and Waterfire. One of Aaron's good friends from high school is living about halfway between Providence and Boston so Josh and Tonya joined us for the evening.

We started off at a rather famous local joint: Bob and Timmy's Grilled Pizza (they had Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy on tap!).

For appetizers we had both bruschetta and calamari - got to get the good sea food in whenever possible.

Next up were two pizzas, both half and half. So we had Four Cheese (with a pink vodka sauce) and Margarita (with proscuitto) pizza. The Margarita pizza would have been absolutly wonderful if the tomatoes had a better flavor. They did not have that summertime fresh taste.

And we had Buffalo Chicken and Trio of Wild Mushrooms pizza. Aaron thought the Buffalo Chicken was the best buffalo chicken type pizza he had ever had. At the end of the meal there was just one slice of the Wild Mushroom pizza left and no one had room to eat it.

The grilled thin crust was amazing . . . and there was NO room for dessert. Bob & Timmy's will soon be seen on the Food Network.

After that we took a short walking tour of downtown and headed over to the river for Waterfire.

Last, we headed out to Newport Creamery to try the "Awful Awful" because we now had room for that dessert. No pictures of that though . . . then home and to bed because Sunday was going to be another really long day.

 

Comments

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Just FYI, Rita's has a middle TN presence. I used to go to Rita's in Hermitage all the time until we moved. They have a wonderful pumpkin pie flavor that sells only in the fall.