A Castle…and the Best Pizza in the World

Jill's Journal: How often can one start a day with a medieval castle in North America? But that’s exactly what we did. After a ferry ride across the Connecticut River, the girls and I got to enjoy Gillette’s Castle, a state park in East Haddam. William Gillette, a celebrated stage actor and playwright from the late 1800s and early 1900s who is best known for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, built a medieval-like fortress as his retirement home. With secret passageways, beautiful views, majestic rooms, and 47 unique doors, the castle held both my interest and the girls’. They were convinced a real prince or princess must have lived there and were enthralled by tales of the 15 cats who lived with the actor and each received personalized birthday parties.

This afternoon, we kidnapped Rob for a late lunch and headed to New Haven with the intention of dining at Louis’ Lunch. The tiny 1895 kitchen is legendary for creating the world’s first hamburger in 1900. Four generations later it is still made the same way, on two slices of toast with no condiments and cooked on the original 1898 cast-iron grills. Unfortunately, we arrived only to find a sign on the front door stating they were closed for entire month of August! So much for that.

We put our appetites on hold with a drive around the lovely Yale University and were tickled to see a plethora of parents moving freshmen into the dorms. Apparently orientation is on Friday and the entire class arrived today, half of them with U-Haul trucks!

If you can’t eat at one legendary New Haven restaurant, you pick another. We’ve also heard rave reviews about Frank Pepe’s Pizzeria Napoletana, which has been named by several publications as serving the best pizza on earth. Pepe’s also pioneered white clam pizza. The white pie, complete with freshly shucked littleneck clams, is their signature item. They won’t sell it if they don’t have fresh clams. They sell so many they have three guys shucking clams at a time!

The 1925 restaurant had a line in the middle of the afternoon and the hostess could not have been more rude to everyone waiting. We almost left, but then we caught sight of a pizza pie. We’re not pizza aficionados, by any means, but it looked GOOD. And it dawned on us: if she can be that rude and there’s still such a line, the food must be pretty spectacular! It was.

The white clam pizza was simply divine. That’s my favorite kind of pizza anyway and I’ve never had one so generously littered with such huge, juicy, fresh clams. Delectable. But the pepperoni was even better. Both Rob and I thought it was the best pepperoni we’d ever had. It’s something about the perfect, coal-fired, bread oven-baked crust that melts in your mouth. Even our Madelyn, who’d already had lunch, normally won’t touch tomato sauce, and is no fan of pizza, had two slices! I asked her if she liked it. Her answer between bites? “Ummm-hmmmm. I love it!”