fly the pizza express

Ken Hoffman calls on pizza fans to take new flight from Hobby to New Haven

Houston pizza lovers should be planning trips to New Haven this summer.

Sally's Apizza/Facebook

How much do you love pizza? How far would be willing to travel, and how much would you pay for the absolute greatest, the Holy Grail of pizza?

If you watch Dave Portnoy’s pizza reviews online – one bite, everybody knows the rules – you know that New Haven, Connecticut is home to the most incredible pizza anywhere and nowhere else is close.

That’s where you find the Big Three of pizza: Sally’s Apizza and Frank Pepe’s Pizzeria Napoletana on Wooster Street, and Modern Apizza around the corner on State Street.

Fly the Pizza Express

But for Houstonians to travel to New Haven is tricky, expensive and time-consuming. There are no direct flights from Houston to New Haven. You’d have to fly to New York City (currently $261 roundtrip on United), catch a shuttle to Penn Station in Manhattan ($20) and then hop a train to New Haven (two hours and about $120 roundtrip back to New York).

But starting June 14, a new air service is coming to Houston. Avelo Air will fly non-stop between Hobby Airport and Tweed Airport in New Haven. Tickets will cost $98 each way. Seats will cost between $64 for front row bulkhead and $26 for the middle seat in the back row. All in, expect to pay about $250 roundtrip Houston-New Haven. You can practically smell that pepperoni pie coming out of the oven at Frank Pepe’s already.

Avelo Air is a small airline. While it services 43 destinations in the U.S., its entire fleet of airplanes consists of 16 Boeing 737s.

Service between Houston and New Haven will take place only on Mondays and Fridays. The flight takes 3 hours and 50 minutes in both directions. So you can make a weekend visit in New Haven – departing Houston on Friday and returning the following Monday. You can crush a ton of pizza over those three days.

Pizza Capital of America

Is it worth the time and money to take the Pizza Express to New Haven? Put it this way, I’ve been to New Haven. I’ve eaten the pizza there. It’d be worth the trip if, like the golden oldie song Kansas City, you might take the train, you might take a plane, but if you have to walk, you should be goin’ just the same.

Yeah, New Haven pizza is that knee-shaking.

A few years ago, my friend Mark George and his son Matthew, my son Andrew and I were in New York for the July 4 Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island. I convinced them, while we’re up here, let’s take the train to New Haven and try that pizza everybody talks about. We’ll eat some pizza and come right back to Manhattan.

We walked from the train station and found Sally’s Apizza, 237 Wooster Street. We first thought, let’s order one large pizza and we’ll split it. Common sense and self-awareness stepped in and we decided to order two large pizzas and we’ll take the leftover slices back to Manhattan.

The waiter brought us our pizzas. They were very large and shaped more like an off-kilter oval than a circle. The pizza was cut into squares. One look and we definitely should have just ordered one pizza.

Ten minutes later, both pizzas were reduced to a few crumbs left on our plates. The pizza was perfect, charred black around the edges, and (as Dave Portnoy would say) good undercarriage and no flop.

It was the best pizza, maybe the best thing, I’ve ever eaten. I pondered, how can I ditch these three losers and spend a couple of days in New Haven?

Now a word of warning: you can order Sally’s Apizza online at Goldbelly.com. They will be delivered frozen to your door in two days for $100. The pizzas are 12 inches – small. They offer five varieties: sauce and mozzarella (plain cheese), pepperoni, white potato and rosemary, plain tomato and garden special (veggie).

But just as the Nathan’s hot dogs you get in a Houston supermarket bear no resemblance to the regal natural casing dogs they serve at Nathan’s stand in Coney Island, the Sally’s Apizza that arrives frozen rock hard on your doorstep is nothing like the amazing pizza they serve bubbling hot from a coal-fired oven in New Haven.

Nothing against Goldbelly, but the next time anybody makes a tolerable frozen pizza will be the first time.

pizza airport

You're Grounded

Southwest and American airlines ban humanoid robots as passengers

Photo by Andrea DeSantis/ Pexels

Sorry fella, it's straight to the cargo hold.

Texas' two major airlines are drawing a hard line between human and humanoid: American Airlines and Southwest Airlines won’t permit human-like or animal-like robots to board flights as passengers.

Fort Worth-based American and Dallas-based Southwest recently adopted bans on robotic passengers after two incidents in which human-like robots joined flesh-and-blood passengers on Southwest flights.

In May, Aaron Mehdizadeh, owner of The Robot Studio rental company in Dallas, was heading from Las Vegas to Dallas Love Field with 3.5-foot-tall Stewie, according to CBS News Texas. Rather than shipping Stewie as cargo, Mehdizadeh bought the robot its own seat using a type of ticket often purchased for fragile items such as wedding dresses and equipment.

But because Stewie was technically a carry-on item, the robot wasn’t supposed to occupy a seat, according to eWeek. Crew members wound up disconnecting Stewie’s battery and relocating the robot to a window seat before takeoff.

Mehdizadeh pushed back on Southwest’s stance regarding the battery, telling CBS News Texas that Stewie’s power supply is a standard battery that’s similar to one for a laptop.

Stewie isn’t the only robot making mischief in the skies. In May, a 70-pound, human-like robot named Bebop caused a stir on a Southwest flight from Oakland, California, to San Diego.

The robot prompted a nearly one-hour flight delay after crew members realized it violated restrictions on large carry-ons and raised concerns about the battery, San Francisco TV station KGO reported. Dallas-based Elite Event Robotics owns Bebop.

Southwest seized Bebop’s lithium-ion battery, but the airline did let Bebop take the San Diego-bound flight.

Southwest’s new robot policy prohibits human-like or animal-like robots from riding in an airplane cabin or as checked baggage, no matter their size or purpose. All other robots, including toys, must fit in a carry-on size bag and comply with battery restrictions, the airline says.

In a statement sent to CultureMap, a Southwest spokeswoman says the airline “has taken a strong stance on this issue and has led the U.S. airline industry with our battery policy.”

“The robot policy is a further evolution of a [safety] journey we have been on for several months. This move was not in response to any single incident,” the spokeswoman adds. “To eliminate confusion, the policy applies to all similar devices, regardless of size.”

Lithium-ion batteries can overheat, catch on fire, or explode on airplanes.

American’s new robot policy, which took effect Monday, August 17, is similar to Southwest’s. The policy prohibits human-like and animal-like robots from sitting in a purchased seat, being stored in an overhead bin or traveling as checked baggage. The ban applies to U.S., international, and regional flights.

“While there have been no known events involving this type of robot on any American flight, this policy was developed following a comprehensive review of safety risks associated with these devices, including the large lithium-ion batteries that power them,” the airline said in an internal memo obtained by the View From the Wing travel blog.

American gate agents have been told not to allow a passenger accompanied by a robot to board a plane or to let a robot travel as a checked item, the memo says.

If a robot is discovered after check-in, American employees are supposed to follow the Federal Aviation Administration’s “undeclared dangerous goods” procedures. These procedures cover hazardous shipments like lithium-ion batteries, explosives, flammable liquids, and compressed gases that lack required warning labels or shipping documents.

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