by Mona Mahadevan The New Haven independent
Coco Cirilli longs for a taste of the Big Green Pizza Truck’s apizza.
Crowds of people waiting to scan their tickets and be part of New Haven pizza history!
New Haven’s crowning moment!
The pizza capital of the United States just baked itself into the Guinness World Record books.
It took 10,000 slices, 4,525 revelers, and four hours on Friday afternoon for New Haven to be officially recognized for throwing the world’s largest pizza party.
“Go pizza, go pizza,” chanted the volunteer “stewards,” cheering on participants as they entered the official party space.
The record-breaking party took place between 3:30 and 7 p.m. on the Upper Green during the city’s tenth annual Grand Prix cycling race and Apizza Feast festival. The event was engineered by Taste of New Haven founder Colin Caplan, who, upon winning the title, declared New Haven as the “pizza capital of the world.”
New Haven took the crown from Tulsa, Oklahoma, which previously held the Guinness World Record for largest pizza party by bringing together 3,357 pizza eaters in 2023.
“I like how they’re hyping us up, like we’re doing something difficult,” said Katie Goyette, one of the first pizza partiers to the Green on Friday. Her classmate at the Yale School of Public Health, Allison Traiger, agreed, and added that she hopes the Grand Prix cyclists get cheers too.
The rules of this party were exacting: participants, who had to buy a ticket for the event in advance, had 15 minutes to eat two slices apiece and drink one bottle of water within a fenced-in area on the Green. Volunteer “stewards” made sure that they ate the whole slice — including the crust, contrary to what Caplan told the Independent last week.
After completing their 15-minute task, pizza partiers were instructed to keep partying at the Apizza Feast festival until 7 p.m.
While the festival featured dozens of pizzerias, the record-setting participants all ate cheese slices fired up by the Big Green Pizza Truck.
Liane Page, who’s been a part of the Big Green Truck business for 17 years, and her husband, Ken, purchased the Big Green five years ago. The couple was approached by Caplan and Guinness organizers, according to Ken, because Caplan insisted that he wouldn’t be able to throw a pizza party without a pizza truck. They brought five trucks, two trailers, and 21 employees to the party, baking over 10,000 slices of cheese pizza in total.
“If you go down the line of pizza trucks on College Street, half of them branched out from Big Green,” said Page. Caplan echoed that comment later in the day, declaring that Big Green started the “pizza truck trend.”
A love of New Haven pizza history brought Marc Giglietti and Mark Vuolo, two long-time New Haveners, to Friday’s event.
With a smile, Giglietti said, “I’ve loved pizza for years.” He’s convinced that New Haven apizza is better than any other variety, noting his affection for the “very thin, charred crust.”
“New Haven pizza was perfected years ago,” he added, explaining that the city’s Italian immigrants had spent decades developing the recipe. Indeed, according to a documentary directed by Gorman Bechard and produced by Caplan and Dean Falcone, the origins of apizza belong to the 1890s, when an influx of Italian immigrants moved into the city. Pepe’s was the city’s first apizza joint, opening in 1925, with Modern Apizza and Sally’s Apizza following 9 and 13 years later.
Given all that history, New Haven is indisputably the pizza capital of the world, agreed Giglietti and Vuolo.
“I’m exhausted, I’m excited,” said Page, while racing to find a generator to charge the event’s ticket scanners. He was motivated to help organize the event because of his pride in New Haven — both its community and its pizza scene: “It’s never been about proving that we’re the pizza capital of the world,” he said. “Just announcing it, big and loud,” like they did on Friday.
Carefully monitoring the pizza partiers was a very tall, clipboard-carrying man in a navy blue suit. That would be Thomas Bradford, an official Guinness adjudicator flown in from Orlando. In addition to his day job, performing in Disney musicals in Orlando, Bradford spent five years training to become one of around 70 official Guinness adjudicators in the world.
Before coming to New Haven, he was in Las Vegas observing Alex Hormozi win the record for fastest-selling non-fiction book with almost 3 million copies. Unlike Friday’s pizza-party event, which involves “corralling lots of people,” that mostly required him to “watch numbers on a computer.” His most fun adjudication? Certifying the record for largest group of people dressed like dinosaurs. (The outfits had to be “serious,” he said — face paint wouldn’t qualify).
As excited she was for this record, Greenwich resident Janine Cirilli noted that it wouldn’t be her first time in the Guinness World Record books. Many years ago, when she was in New York City for the premiere of Paul Blart: Mall Cop, she helped break a Guinness record for simultaneous 360-degree turns on Segways (108, if you were wondering).
She and her husband, Ronald, were still just as excited to be part of Friday’s event. They both agreed that New Haven pizza is better than any New York slice, citing “the coal fire” and “char on crust.” As they chowed down, their dog, Coco, looked on longingly for a bite.
When the couple ate their slices and exited the fenced-in area, dozens of stewards clapped and cheered. They exclaimed, “You just made history!”
At around 7:30 p.m., from a stage on the Green, Bradford made it official. While handing over the Guinness certificate to Caplan, he declared, “Congratulations, New Haven! You’re officially amazing!”
“Pizza is a passion of ours,” said Jeremy Jamilkowski.
Gavin, Kyle, Jose, and Erica said they were at the event for the pizza. “I really like the pizza,” said Kylie, 10. Her favorite pizza joint is Pizza Haven, which she says “really tastes like pizza heaven.”
The fearless adjudicator, Thomas Bradford, was born in London and lives in Orlando. He was rooting for New Haven to break the record!
Kenny Page, the son of Liane and Ken Page, fired up apizza pies.
The prize for participating in the record-setting pizza party, other than bragging rights, is this pizza box memento.