It is a truth universally acknowledged that the best pizza in the world comes from New Haven, Connecticut. Yet even among that upper echelon of melty goodness, there is one pizzeria that—in my humble opinion—reigns supreme: Modern Apizza*.
(Full disclosure: I grew up in New Haven, so I might be slightly biased. But only a little bit.)
What's the secret sauce to the success of New Haven abpeetz? Is it the mootz? The char embedded in the dough from the ancient brick ovens left burning for nearly a century? Or is it—as some New York City pizza places claim—literally just the municipal water supply that the restaurant uses in the dough?
Let's go with the latter. It's certainly the easiest to package up and profit from. Which is why Modern Apizza (with help from a local brewery) is now selling 4-packs of canned water for $30 a pop. As the local ABC news affiliate explains:
Armada Brewing is using its facility to can that precious water. Right on that can is written the recipe for Modern's dough. There is also a QR code. You can point your phone at that and it will take you to an instructional video of Pustari showing you how to make that dough.
A four-pack of H2Dough sells for $29.99, and 10% of the profits go to the Feeding Families Foundation. The group helps feed families of hospitalized children.
Thirty bucks for canned municipal water—sorry, H2Dough—sounds a little ridiculous. Also, as someone who has had frozen nearly-cooked Modern pizzas shipped to him when he lived too far away, I am absolutely going to spend that money to see if I can replicate the recipe.
Modern Apizza selling canned New Haven tap water [Kent Pierce / WTNH]
*Pepe's is great, but a little too doughy—again, in my humble opinion. And the last time I went to Sally's was a few days before Christmas 2009. It was one of the first dates I went on with the woman who is now my wife. There was no line out the door (for once), but somehow it still took three god damn hours to get our pizza. I couldn't tell you how good the pizza was or wasn't, because by that point I was so damn hungry it wouldn't make a difference anyway. But somehow, she did still marry me.
