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I wanted to chime in on the ongoing New England pizza discussion.

Papa Ginos is somewhat similar to the mom-and-pop stuff, but it's different in a few key ways: 'Ginos has a thinner crust than most local places, and it's less (!) greasy.

Thinking back to the local non-chain pizza of my northeast Connecticut youth, the distinguishing characteristics are a firm-but-not-crisp, doughy bottom, sometimes tending towards rubbery, and the use of cheap manufactured mozz, typically very oily. It tended to be the sort of pizza that, if you were eating a slice and folded it, you could pretty much squeeze several tablespoons of orange grease out of it. The crust tends to be crisp on the outside and soft inside, sometimes a little bready.

And the pizza places, almost always "[town name] Pizza" or [town name] House of Pizza", were uniformly owned by Greek families. (I never quite worked out why...but it was always faux-Italian food, pizza, and good Greek stuff on the menu.) I'm not sure if that's still as much the case now as it was 20 years ago, though.

Some places in New England seem to do the square-cut thing, which I think is truly blasphemous, while others pie cut. I've never been able to figure out a regional variation to this. It's just a weird individual preference of the restaurant owner, I think.

Why nobody in New England, at least north of New Haven, seems to be able to produce a decent NY-style thin-crust, I've no idea. Maybe it's the water.

My personal recommendation, if you wanted to "experience" a representative sample of New England-style pizza, would be to try Willington House of Pizza in Willington, CT. Although they have a menu that's more diverse than average, it covers pretty much everything I remember from all the local places I went as a kid.