A century ago Frank Pepe walked around downtown New Haven with his “tomato pies” piled high on his specially made chef’s hat. One hundred years later, Pepe’s is still churning out its classic Napolitan-style apizza, and New Haven itself is stacking up more than just pizzas.

On September 12, an expected 5,000 lovers of the thin crust that Frank Pepe made famous will converge on the New Haven Green to try and set a Guinness World Record for Largest Pizza Party. Slices of plain, numbering above 10,000, will be brought in by the truckload. 

Part of the A-1 Toyota Apizza Feast, the event is aimed at more than just bragging rights in the century-long crust competition between New Haven and New York City. Rather, it is intended as a celebration of New Haven’s culinary culture, a rare space of civic identity shared by the city’s haves and have-nots. 

“Next year kids here might be taught in school that their hometown just set a Guinness World Record,” said Colin Caplan, creator of Taste of New Haven, the organization behind the Apizza Feast. “It can be a bit of motivation and recognition, and that community pride can go a long way. It’s from the community, for the community.”

Taste of New Haven hopes to take the title by topping the existing record of 3,357, set by pizza-eating participants at a University of Tulsa basketball game on a cold and rainy January day two years ago in Oklahoma. The goal is for 5,000 hungry souls to eat within a defined 3-hour window on September 12, in defined corrals watched over fastidiously by stewards from Guinness’s certifying body. 

Tickets to the record-setting pizza party are $20 for adults and $10 for children under 18. Admission buys a bottle of water, a drink ticket and two slices of pizza. Those two slices must be finished by all participants for the record to count. Event organizers noted that Guinness World Record rules and regulations stipulate that crust eating is not mandatory.

The apizza makers providing the two slices, one of the food feast’s original vendors, are as sure participants will eat every last bite as they are of New Haven’s position atop the pizza pyramid. 

“We were the first pizza truck on the entire East Coast,” declared Liane Page, owner of Big Green Truck Pizza. “New Haven started the entire pizza truck revolution, and there’s no other place that deserves to hold the Guinness record more. Read it in the Congressional Record: New Haven is the pizza capital of the United States.”

The event is expected to draw in locals and out-of-towners alike, delivering a significant economic boost to New Haven businesses. Caplan estimated that the overall economic impact could be as high as $3 million.

“The impact of this event is multi-tiered,” Caplan told the News. “They’ll be staying in a hotel. They’ll be taking transportation. They’re gonna buy food, and drinks. There’s all these spin-off things that are happening around the festival.”

Caplan has good cause for optimism, and not just regarding the economic benefits. In 2021, when Philadelphia set the unofficial record for world’s largest cheesesteak — a 510-footer that stretched 3 blocks long — the event was the talk of the town. For a sandwich synonymous with the City of Brotherly Love, celebrating their common taste was a way to bring Philly back together after a pandemic-torn year. 

Apizza is to New Haven what cheesesteak is to Philadelphia, and however you slice it, New Haveners wear their civic pride loud and proud. There’s even an Airbnb listing for a “Pizza Palace” just a few blocks from campus — replete with margherita wallpaper, pepperoni throw blankets, the “Pizza Bible” on the bedside nightstand, and a sign affixed to the door of the “Presidente Suite” that reads: “In Crust We Trust.”

While few New Haveners are quite as particular about pledging their pride in apizza, appreciating the craft of the many pizzaiolos who have followed in Frank Pepe’s footsteps is baked into local civic identity. A Guinness world record would further cement New Haven’s status as America’s pizza capital, but even if the event falls short of the 3,357 attendees needed to break the record, the local love for apizza is unlikely to melt away, no matter whether you come from an upper crust background or you don’t have much dough.

“I think the best pizza in the world is the one you grew up with, the one where your childhood memories are,” said George Koutroumanis, the longtime owner of beloved campus haunt Yorkside Pizza. “The best pizza in the world is the one you love the most.”

This article was written for the Yale Daily News’ 2025 Summer Journalism Program for high school students.