A taste of New Haven, Connecticut is coming to the U.S. Pizza Museum in Chicago! Author and historian, Colin M. Caplan, has curated an exhibit about the unique history of pizza in New Haven. U.S. Pizza Museum Founder and Director, Kendall Bruns, will join Caplan for a discussion followed by a book signing and a screening of Pizza, A Love Story. There will be a post-film Q&A with director, Gorman Bechard.

Schedule

• 4:30pm: Opening Reception Begins
• 5:30pm: Pizza in New Haven author, Colin M. Caplan, Q&A followed by a book signing
• 7pm: Pizza, A Love Story documentary screening (limited seating) followed by Q&A with director, Gorman Bechard

About Pizza in New Haven

Pizza in New Haven is the culmination of over 140 years of Italian cultural and culinary influence in this storied Yankee industrial city. Caplan captures a legendary but forgotten past showcasing the toils of immigration and factory work and the bonds created through preparing family recipes. The book opens readers’ appetites to one of the earliest and most influential pizza making cities in the country and how these hardworking families built a culinary industry around their shared passion for their native comfort food. The same coal that supplied the world with New Haven’s factory fare cooked the delectable pizza that fed mill workers, produce farmers, politicians, college students and townies of every color, creed and carriage alike. New Haven’s historic pizzerias dominate the city’s food landscape and attract hungry and curious visitors from around the globe looking to satisfy their quest for what is unequivocally the greatest food to ever be made.

About Pizza, A Love Story

In the 6 block radius of Wooster square lies the trifecta, Sally’s, Pepe’s and Modern. Three pizza palaces loved by everybody from Presidents to Rock Stars. Even Frank Sinatra used to send his driver all the way from Hoboken just to pick up some pies. And to the people of the Elm City, there’s no question. Since Frank Pepe first wheeled his bread cart down Wooster street in 1925, New Haven has been home to the finest pizza on the planet.

Coming off the success of his last feature, Color Me Obsessed, a film about The Replacements, which Rolling Stone named “one of the seven best music documentaries of the year,” director Gorman Bechard moves from one lifelong obsession to another. This time taking a look at the long history, the families, the high and the lows of three universally recognized restaurants, and how a city that itself has gone through many highs and lows, has always rallied behind them.

Pizza, A Love Story features interview with family members (including Sally’s wife Flora, and Frank Pepe’s grandson), lifelong fans (both famous and not), and food critics, intercutting archival footage and vintage photographs (many never before seen publicly), all to explain the passion, the long lines, and how a small town in Connecticut became the pizza center of the universe. It promises to be the most mouth-watering film ever made.