Mystic Pizza - Mystic, CT - Review
There's something oddly unpretentious about Mystic Pizza, despite the tourist trap nature of their business. Tucked away on a quintessential New England street, its iconic red and white sign proclaiming "A SLICE OF HEAVEN" hangs proudly against a white clapboard exterior, with a church steeple visible in the distance. This is small-town New England at its most picturesque.
Inside, it's exactly what you want it to be - worn wooden booths with light blue vinyl padding, walls covered in memorabilia, and the warm, inviting aroma of pizza that's made this a local institution since 1973. This place has outlasted disco, the Cold War, and several economic downturns. The establishment leans into its fame without apology, playing the movie that put them on the map on a continuous loop in a room filled with artifacts from their brush with Hollywood.
It's a strange cultural phenomenon - none of these servers were born when Julia Roberts, Lili Taylor, and Annabeth Gish were serving those pies on the silver screen. The movie, now 37 years old, has moved from zeitgeist to something approaching mythology now for the town. Today's teenagers coming in with their parents might nod politely at the significance, but they're here for the pizza, not a cinematic history lesson from 1988.
The pizza arrives on a black pan, simple and straightforward. The crust is substantial enough to provide structure but airy and light, with a satisfying crisp edge. The sauce carries herbaceous notes without overwhelming, neither watery nor gloopy, hitting that perfect middle ground. And the cheese - there's a generous, almost defiant amount of it, melted to a not quite golden layer below the pepperoni that curl slightly at the edges, adding a little contrast to the pie.
What's most surprising is that despite its obvious tourist-draw status, the restaurant maintains its pre-fame soul. Servers refill drinks without prompting, attentive without hovering. The prices remain reasonable, despite the perfect opportunity to cash in on their fame. In the booth next to yours, locals mix with tourists, a testament to the fact that beneath the souvenir t-shirts and the movie posters, Mystic Pizza still delivers exactly what it promised back in '73 - a little slice of heaven in idyllic Connecticut.
