Pepe’s Pizza – New Haven, CT from pophangover on Vimeo.

A few weeks ago, GQ‘s Alan Richman, the critic who last year won the coveted Golden Clog Douchebag award as “the journalist who actually HATES food and hates the people who make food even more,” presented his list of America’s 25 best pizzas. The list, as these things always do, generated a small shitstorm of backlash, both locally and nationally.

I personally was interested in finding out what pizzerias Richman had sampled in D.C., since none of them made the critic’s cut. I called GQ and was informed that Richman, as a contributor to the magazine, does not have a phone or voice mailbox. I asked if I could leave a message and have Richman call me back. The receptionist said no. I asked if there were an e-mail for Richman and ran into yet another brick wall. The GQ site was no help, either. I found nary a contact for Richman. So I finally left a message on Richman’s blog, Forked, asking him to call when he had a moment.

I’m still waiting.

Others, however, had no interest in giving Richman a chance to defend his choices. One blogger, who writes a semi-amusing snarkfest known as Food Network Humor, took the opportunity provided by Richman’s list to absolutely bash the New Haven institution, Frank Pepe. Aside from the video above, FNH served up this over-the-top description of a Pepe pie:

However, PEPE’S PIZZA IS DISGUSTING. I can not emphasize that enough. On our last trip there, we ordered a large cheese pizza. What we received was a dry, cheeseless, virtually tasteless pie. This is the norm at Pepe’s, not the exception. The dough is so chewy and hard that you can hardly swallow it. The crust, which is usually one of my favorite parts, is completely inedible. The cheese is exceptionally salty. The tomato sauce is bland. All you taste is soot from the coal oven and salt from the cheap cheese, and it’s simply awful.