Yale's Pizza Prodigies are Changing the Face of Dining Hall Cuisine

In New Haven, Connecticut, home to some of the most storied pizzerias in America, Ivy League upstarts are making homegrown pies and challenging the status quo.

- Howie Kahn

Recently, I found myself in lower Manhattan eating finger food and clinking glasses with Jonathan Holloway, the dean of Yale College at Yale University. We should have been talking about the reason for the swanky gathering: a fund-raiser for René Redzepi’s Danish nonprofit culinary think tank, MAD, and its new partnership with Yale to launch a leadership institute for ambitious chefs intent on improving food systems around the globe. Redzepi himself was visible in the open kitchen, preparing dinner along with Roy Choi, Daniel Patterson, and Dan Barber. And I also meant to ask Holloway, a brilliant scholar of African-American history, about his own work. Instead, thinking of New Haven, Connecticut, my thoughts turned, naturally, to pizza.

“What’s your favorite?” I asked. Holloway responded with something shocking, the kind of secret-sounding inside tip you always hope to get, but rarely do.

“I think the best pizza in New Haven,” he said, with professorial gravitas, “is actually at Yale Farm.”