By Charlie Pogacar
Sometimes, Mike Nuzzo feels Grand Apizza has been marginalized. And the second generation pizzaiolo—who owns three successful Grand Apizza locations along the Connecticut shoreline—is on a mission to change that.
As New Haven-style apizza has exploded into the national consciousness, his family’s pizzeria, Grand Apizza—founded in 1955 in New Haven’s Fair Haven neighborhood—has, at times, been left out of the beloved pizza style’s history. Frank Pepe’s, Sally’s and Modern Apizza have been dubbed New Haven’s “big three,” but Nuzzo believes Grand Apizza belongs alongside those institutions on the city’s proverbial Mount Rushmore of cultural touchstones.
“It never made my father feel slighted,” Nuzzo told PMQ Pizza. “But me and my brothers did…Because the truth is, Grand was right there from the start.”
Related: Is New Haven-Style Apizza Set to Explode? This Expert Says Yes.
Modern Apizza
The story of Grand Apizza begins with Nuzzo’s father, Frederick, an accountant for Firestone who traded balance sheets for pizza dough. Nuzzo’s brother, Nicholas, had entered the restaurant business by buying Modern Apizza in 1948. By the mid-’50s, the brothers were working side by side—their wives waiting tables and managing the front.
In 1955, Fred Nuzzo struck out on his own, opening Grand Apizza on Grand Avenue in Fair Haven—a working class neighborhood in New Haven. The location was less than two miles from Pepe’s, Sally’s and Modern, yet it existed in a decidedly different world. While those iconic shops were frequented by Yale students and tourists, Fair Haven was a blue-collar neighborhood: tight-knit, diverse, proud and—at times—overlooked.
“It was beautiful,” Nuzzo recalls. “A big melting pot. But when redevelopment didn’t happen [as had been planned], the area kind of got lost in the shuffle.”
It’s worth noting that Grand Apizza’s location may be exactly why the pizzeria is sometimes left out of discussion surrounding the history of apizza. While Pepe’s, Sally’s and Modern are all within walking distance of one another, Grand Apizza requires a short car ride from Wooster Street.
On top of that, the elder Nuzzo never chased press or prestige. “He used to say, ‘We’re on Grand Avenue with our own sauce, doing our own thing,’” Nuzzo said of his father, who passed away in 2013. “He never bragged, never advertised. He just believed the business would prove itself.”
Second Generation
For his part, Mike Nuzzo initially resisted the family business. After spending so much time growing up in his father’s pizza shop—and having grown accustomed to how seldom Fred got time off to spend with his family—Nuzzo decided to follow in his father’s footsteps in a different way. He went to the University of New Haven, became an accountant and spent a dozen years in that world.
But, in 1993, opportunity—and family—pulled him back in. His brother, David, wanted to open a second location near the Connecticut shoreline, and their parents agreed to help finance it under one condition: Mike had to join him. Though he was initially torn—did he really want to sacrifice all that time?—he ended up taking the dive, and he’s glad he did. “It was the best decision I ever made,” he said. “I never thought I’d be where I am today.”
That first shoreline shop, opened in Madison just blocks from Hammonasset Beach State Park, thrived on summer crowds and loyal locals. When the landlord repurposed the building in 2000, Nuzzo moved three miles down the road to Clinton, where one of three Grand Apizza locations still operates today. In 2014, he returned to Madison with a larger downtown store that would become his busiest location. A year later, he added a third in nearby Guilford, run by his sister, Marianne, and her husband, Lou Rivadeneira.
“People thought I was crazy—three stores within six miles of each other,” Nuzzo said. “But I knew the shoreline. I knew our name would travel.”
It did, without a single dollar spent on advertising. Instead, Nuzzo poured his “marketing budget” into the community—sponsoring school fundraisers, donating to police and fire departments and supporting families in need. This, too, was a page out of his father’s playbook. “That’s how we built our reputation,” he said. “You do it by helping the people around you, and everybody wins.”
Same Recipe, New Generation(s)
Grand Apizza’s menu has hardly changed since 1955. “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it—that’s something my dad used to say,” Nuzzo said. “People always tell me, ‘You should add veal, or such and such’ to the menu. And I tell them: we’re a pizza house, not a fancy Italian restaurant.”
The ovens have evolved, though. For decades, Grand Apizza used gas ovens. They’ve since switched to modern electric deck ovens lined with bricks. After testing them side-by-side, Nuzzo was convinced. “They cook the same, but they recover faster,” he said. “We can push through rush hour without slowing down.” A busy Friday night now sees more than 500 pies leave the ovens.
Grand Apizza is still a family affair. In fact, that aspect of the business has only proliferated. Mike’s wife, Migdalia, still works in the shops a few days a week. Their sons, Mikey Jr. and Christopher, run the day-to-day operations of the Madison and Clinton stores and have been making pizzas since they were 10. Daughter Brittany works part time in the Madison shop. “They told me they wanted to follow in [Frederick’s] footsteps,” Nuzzo says. “That meant the world to me.”
The Rocket Ship
Now 65, Nuzzo handles the accounting while his kids manage the kitchens. He’s candid about the industry’s challenges—labor shortages, regulations, long hours—but grateful for the moment New Haven-style pizza is having. And while there may be some consternation with Grand Apizza’s relative lack of shine, Nuzzo is overall grateful for everything apizza has given him and his family.
“I’m ecstatic,” he said of apizza trending upwards. “We’ve got people coming from all over—Wisconsin, California, even internationally—and they come back every summer. I can’t believe how far apizza has come.”
Grand Apizza even got the Portnoy bump, scoring an 8.2 in a One Bite Review. “Four years later, people still walk in saying, ‘I saw you on that review,’” Nuzzo said.
But for Nuzzo, the recognition that matters most isn’t online—it’s seeing his family’s name finally remembered alongside the legends. “We put in the blood, sweat and tears for seventy years,” he said. “We’re part of that story. We always have been.”
