FRANK PEPE

When Frank Pepe came to America from a town called Maori on the Amalfi Coast southwest of Naples, he had no intention of becoming a baker, much less the Jupiter of twentieth-century pizza. “He learned to bake bread here,” says his grandson, Francis Rosselli, who grew up with him at the helm of Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana. When Francis says here, he doesn’t just mean America. He means here on Wooster Street, in New Haven, Connecticut, which, when Frank Pepe arrived in the teens, was a robust neighborhood with a business at every address. Francis points over his shoulder with his thumb, indicating the place where Libby’s pastry shop now stands, and where his grandfather learned the baker’s trade—at a business called Generoso Muro, which made bread and macaroni.

In 1925 Frank Pepe rented out a space at 163 Wooster Street and opened a bakery. He was illiterate and because he had a hard time keeping orders for bread delivery in his head (yes, in those days, bread was delivered just like milk), he decided to use the bakery to make the simple flat-breads that he knew from his homeland: thin rounds of dough spread with tomato, olive oil, garlic, and grated cheese, with anchovies the only option. They were cooked in the bread oven that then was heated by coke (a fuel derived from coal), emerging with an edge that offered a good chew and a bit of bituminous char. There was no home delivery, and there were no pizza boxes at the time; nor did the original place offer tables at which to eat. When a customer came in to buy a tomato pie to go, Pepe set it on a piece of corrugated cardboard called a flat and wrapped paper around it.

Pepe’s original oven was at a restaurant known as the Spot in a building owned by the Boccamiello family. In 1937, once his tomato pies had gained a loyal following, he was evicted and the Boccamiellos continued in the pizza-making business. Ever resourceful, Frank Pepe bought the building next door, installing an oven and tables where customers could sit and enjoy what he advertised as “delicious Italian food” in the form of Neapolitan tomato pies. To come to a restaurant, sit down, and eat pizza was such a novelty that Frank had a hard time convincing authorities in Hartford to grant him a license to offer beer with his pies. Until that time, pizza was considered a corollary of bread-making; Frank Pepe had to drive home the point that people actually came to his place, sat down, and ate pizza—just like they would a regular meal.

Frank Pepe’s welcoming personality helped make his Wooster Street establishment far more than just an eatery. Francis recalls that even into Grandpop’s older days in the 1960s, he used to stroll around and chat with customers, sit at tables, and enjoy the company. Through the 1940s and into the 1950s, he opened at noon and did not close until 3 a.m. Francis explains: “The community was so vibrant then. People didn’t automatically get in their cars and go somewhere else. This was their home, their social life, their friends and family. They came to Pepe’s to be with each other and with Grandpop.”