I\'ve been eating SuperHaven apizza for 5 years now, and I lived in NYC all last year and ate the pizza there. I consider myself supremely qualified to answer this tasty question.
Let\'s get one thing straight right off the bat: You cannot beat SuperHaven apizza anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. Since this is a debate between New Haven vs. New York, believe me when I say that there isn\'t one place in New York that can beat Pepe\'s, Sally\'s, Modern, Bar, or John and Maria\'s.
The pizza in New York might be the most overrated aspect of the entire city. Why does it get such a good rep? Because it is better than 99.9% of all the pizza in the USA, which all pretty much sucks. (Especially when you consider that about 80% of the entire domestic pizza output comes from Pizza Hut, Domino\'s, Papa John\'s, Little Caeser\'s, and other robotic chains.) So people travel from all over the USA to check out New York, and they think the pizza is the best they\'ve ever had, and they\'re right. In addition, the fact that the eater is in New York puts them in a mindset where everything is grand and wonderous beyond its actual scale. The problem is, they\'ve never been to New Haven.
Anthony makes a good point about how there are so many different pizza restaurants in New York that it\'s hard to know which ones to use to judge the city by, wheras in New Haven everyone knows you judge the city by Sally\'s, Pepe\'s, and Modern. However, after eating in many New York pizza restaurants (and I mean restaurants and not the slice-express stores you see on every corner) I realized that they all have something in common: I call it the Marginal Utility Theory of Industry in New York. (MUTINY) This theory is applicable to many industries in New York, but for this example we will stick with pizza restaurants. Every pizza restaurant in New York is charging as much as they can, usually about $12 for a small and up to $30 for a large with a topping or two. They get away with it because they are in New York and people come with money. They cannot raise their price because they are at the market threshhold; nobody will pay $40-$50 for a pizza no matter how good it\'s supposed to be. Since they cannot raise their price they cannot raise their quality without cutting into their margins, but there is no need to raise the quality anyhow since they have a good reputation where they are. Customers, even those who live locally, will perceive the quality to be higher than it is because it\'s in New York and everything looks chique and authentic on the surface.
In summary, the MUTINY theory proves that there is no benefit for a pizza restaurant in New York city to raise their quality. They all charge the market maximum for mid grade to upper-mid grade pizza, and are able to fill the restaurant. Thus, every pizza restaurant hovers at this level of quality and will not get any better. So, in response to Anthony, it really does not matter which restaurants you use to judge New York City pizza by, because the MUTINY theory proves that they are all at the same level.
Bottom line: Nothing wrong with New York pizza. It\'s easily better than most. But it is not as good as New Haven and never will be.
