What the heck is APIZZA??!!??

I've seen the term "Apizza" my entire life.  Mostly because my family is from Waterbury and you see it all through that area, down the Naugatuck Valley and into New Haven.  I always subconsciously wondered why the names of the pizza restaurants were called Apizza, rather than just pizza, but presumably like most people, I never really thought that much about it.

I did a little research on this.  Here's what I found on Wikipedia:

Use of the term "apizza" (pronounced ah-Beetz) is mostly confined to the Italian-American enclaves of southern Connecticut, and derives from Neapolitan dialect.  The dish is more widely known throughout the region as simply "New Haven-style pizza", as opposed to which remains the dominant style of pizza-making throughout the rest of the Northeast.

Pepe's in New Haven was the first.  As for the pronunciation of the word, I have personally never heard anybody call it "Ah-Beetz".  But, granted, I either may have never noticed it or maybe it's attributable to the fact that Connecticut Italians having a habit of dropping the final vowel of a word when they speak.  I do it all the time because, well, that's just how we talk down here.

I'll get more into the differences between New Haven pizza and New York pizza in a later post.  But, I am proud to report that we CT Italian own the word "apizza"!