Pepe’s Pie Makes Vegan Ex-Prez ​“Dizzy”

In Connecticut campaigning for the Democratic presidential campaign of his wife Hillary, former President Bill Clinton surprised the patrons of Wooster Square’s Original Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana at just after 6 p.m. Thursday.

The 42nd president worked his way through the pizzeria, stopping to greet diners, many of them taking in an evening of the New Haven-style ​“apizza” that Pepe’s helped make famous.

“That looks really good,” Clinton, who has in recent years adopted a vegan diet, said to one diner enjoying a classic pepperoni pizza. ​“I haven’t had anything yet. It smells so good, I’m getting dizzy.” (When Ronald Reagan campaigned for president in Wooster Square in 1980, he, too, stopped at Pepe’s —and indulged. He called it the best pizza he’d ever tasted — and went on to win the election. Clinton also visited the pizzeria before; a picture of him still hangs there.)

Clinton posed for pictures and helped facilitate the taking of selfies. He also told his version of his first date with Secretary Clinton while they were both Yale Law School students, and what ​“pick up” line he used to get her attention.

“I got outed,” he said. ​“She was registering for class. So, I saw her and I got in the line to register for class. When she got up to the line, I was standing behind her, and the registrar said, ​‘Bill, what are you doing in line? You already registered this morning.”

Joe and Leslie Gordon were just enjoying a pizza at their favorite dinner spot when they saw men with television cameras sweep into the restaurant and set up quickly. They knew something was up.

“I said, ​‘I know that guy,’” Leslie Gordon said. “‘That’s the guy from Channel 8.’”

“Then I saw someone who looked like security,” Joe Gordon said. ​“And then I saw Bubba.”

By the time Clinton left at almost 7 p.m. — boxes of pizza for his Secret Service escorts and other handlers made it in the car before he did — the crowd outside had swelled with people like Rick Ribko and Cindy Simell-Devoe, who were at a nearby engagement party. He saw the motorcade earlier as he was trying to get to the party.

Ribko said he thought it might have been former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but he was just as happy to see the former president with whom he managed to grab a selfie.

“I’m Hillary all the way,” he said.

Simell-Devoe and her husband, Ken, said that in the interest of making a bit of a statement on the state of the two-party system and the need for competition, they’re actually voting for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders in the state’s upcoming Tuesday primary.

But they said they’ll fully support Secretary Clinton in the general election because they think she’s going to be the nominee.

“Hillary’s my girl,” Simell-Devoe said.