There's a bougie-looking dad and son, plus a large multigenerational family there for the non-pizza food (which I understand is also quite good). For the second question, we'll either have a neighborhood pick to toss out, or we'll end up learning something new from a local (which is always a good thing). Over the course of three consecutive evenings there, I saw several of the same faces, all of them bantering with Louie and often with one another. 1140 1st Ave. 10065 212-838-5080. Frank Mastro, who invented the gas-fired pizza oven in 1934. And Scarr's is the only one in New York selling such pizza by the slice. We much preferred the regular, which, even with the changes, somehow still tasted like Di Fara. Ed Levine is the founder and overlord of Serious Eats and author of multiple books, most recently Serious Eater: A Food Lover's Perilous Quest for Pizza and Redemption. Located in” more, “Joe's pizza... there's not much more to say except that if you're from New York you should be” more, “ flavor and if you like ricotta there's plenty to go around. When you live and breathe and think about pizza constantly, there are just too many variations among slices and too many gray areas. Finally, let's talk about reheats. Jesse Angelino: The only thing better than a NY style pizza,is an original Italian pie Only place you'll find one,(and they are huge)is Lombardis downtown. 6. He was raised in Bensonhurst, trained at the CIA, and opened a slice shop in Williamsburg at the height of Brooklyn's mid-aughts renaissance. “After a long conversation the owner explained what happened and went above and beyond to make it right. Dom has a pizza-making assistant now, which helps some. I've been eating and writing about pizza for over 20 years, and published the aforementioned book on pizza (Pizza: A Slice of Heaven) in 2005. As a general rule, most pizza is best eaten straight out of the oven, but we strongly recommend eating a regular slice from Mama's Too as fresh from the oven as possible; it loses some of its ethereal qualities when you let it sit. Joe’s Pizza. – Larchmont – Villa Maria Pizza… It's got a dense edge, more cheese than many a New York slice, and nice color on the underside. Scott's assessment is a bit stronger: "It's the definitive slice. 2. Visit INSIDER.com for more stories. Search ... have been a best NYC pizza round-up without it. For folks who grew up in deep Brooklyn, Delmar in Sheepshead Bay often serves as a litmus test. Broadway between 1st ave. And I'm Ed Levine, the founder of Serious Eats. The customers are a diverse lot—this is Queens, after all, on the border of Jackson Heights and Elmhurst. 8.4. I guess that's why they call their regular slices Margheritas. The old-school places that laid the foundations for the revivalists to build upon. The sauce is barely evident. It's the little quirks that make the difference here. Some HTML is OK: link, strong, em. PERCY'S PIZZA: Dollar slices aren't usually much to crow about, and even the drunkest of dabblers would rate most offerings as middling at best. It was neither knowingly hip-looking like Scarr's, nor was it charmingly old-school like J&V. (The owners worked with uber–pizza consultant Anthony Falco, who made a name for himself at Roberta's.). We had a very good grandma slice here, and the regular slice has an old-school NYC crust with a crisp veneer and tender insides, and plenty of color and bubbles to boot. One tell is seeing a slice absolutely blanketed in cheese. Tom's last name may look familiar if you've already perused the "Classics" section: He's the grandson of Vincent DeGrezia, the "V" in Bensonhurst old-school joint J&V Pizza. (The regular New York pie is not to be confused with the Sicilian or "grandma" pie, both of which have thicker crusts. @xoitzjazz Jul 29, 2016 05:06 PM. But don't skip their signature spinach-dip slice, which sounds like a gut-busting gimmick but actually works, leaving you feeling satisfied but not regretful in the least. The people cycling in and out all seem to be regulars—if they're not, you wouldn't know it from the way Louie chitchats with them. So I decided to split up our list into three parts to do just that: Before we go any further, though, some caveats. 4 Of NYC's Best Pizza Slices Are In Brooklyn, Food Critic Says - Bed-Stuy, NY - Four Brooklyn spots made it onto Eater's list of the "Top 12 Neighborhood Pizza Slices" in New York City… They do the initial bake in the coal oven, and when you order a slice, they reheat it in a standard gas-fired deck oven. A photo of a slice from Staten Island legend Joe & Pat's is instantly recognizable: a super-thin, flat crust all the way to the edge, with discrete cubes of low-moisture mozzarella that melt into distinct blobs (rather than the full coverage that comes from using shredded cheese), against a background of very simple tomato sauce. When it comes to the thoughtful reinvention of the classic New York slice here in the city, Frank Pinello may be Patient Zero. $15-$20 New York Style Pizzas: According to NPR, the price of Manhattan’s average pizza range, depending on the neighborhood, from $12 to $23. Despite the many that have followed it, Kesté is still one of the best at adhering to the strict rules meant to reproduce true Naples style. Searching for the absolute best pizza in New York City is an inherently flawed mission. But, as Scott pointed out to us, this is a false "gum line"—a line in the crust where the dough is still raw, which can happen in improperly cooked pizza. While we've certainly witnessed a revival of the New York slice, you could also argue that it's been reinvented, all because of five perhaps inseparable factors: Take Frank Pinello, who may be one of the best examples of this convergence of most, if not all, of the points above. Comments can take a minute to appear—please be patient! Follow Sire on Instagram while you're at it. Pizza, introduced to New York in 1905 by Gennaro Lombardi, who saw it as a way to use up the day-old bread in his Spring Street grocery store, has long been the affordable, satisfying food of choice for peripatetic New Yorkers of every age, sex, race, and class. It's the truth. They're elevating the New York pizza slice in a way that no one else has in a long time." Super-fast and efficient service, and you can almost always find a seat. The squares are superb, with a satisfying crisp-chewy quality and a nice open crumb that still stands up to the substantial toppings. Perfect. "What's the best way to set New Yorkers to bickering? Judging by his work at Williamsburg Pizza, those places are in good hands. Despite the old admonition about judging a book by its cover, sometimes you really can look at a slice and not want any part of it. Patsy's Pizza: 2287 First Avenue, New York NY 10035 (117/118; map); 212-534-9783 [Photograph: Nick Solares] A New York slice (or pie) has a thin crust that's crisp yet flexible—you can fold it without shattering it like a cracker. At the same time, Pinello's Culinary Institute chops reveal themselves in the attention he pays to ingredients—making, then shredding, fresh mozzarella for the cheese; pickling various vegetables for the sesame seed–crusted white "pickled veg" slice; respecting the ingredients enough to let them stand on their own, as with the nice bright sauce on the plain slice, which is made simply from good-quality crushed tomatoes. Any ambitious New York slice shop opening in 2019 or beyond will have to do the same if it hopes to distinguish itself in a pack of truly superlative peers. Both are putting out some promising pies, but we left them off the list proper to give their slices some time to mature. Joe's Pizza Since 1975 7 Carmine Street New York, NY. The Manhattan outpost is new (it was a Brooklyn-only staple before this year), but this could not, in good conscience, have been a best NYC pizza round-up without it. But Rizzo's takes it to a whole new level—you can almost imagine them meticulously laying on one two- by three-inch rectangle of sliced cheese per slice. Customers can choose between regular crust or cauliflower crust. "So I opened this place.". Pizza in New Jersey is one of the essential eats in the state – with a huge range of choice, various styles of cooking and passionate entrepreneurs serving it up, there really is something for everybody. You can overferment, but that's an issue you'll likely never encounter at most slice pizzerias, where the more common foul seems to be making and using the dough too quickly. Copyright © 2004–2021 Yelp Inc. Yelp, , and related marks are registered trademarks of Yelp. If you're going to the Garden, this should be your pre- or post-game slice. @xoitzjazz Jul 29, 2016 05:06 PM. That being said, it is hard to really choose where to go to get the best pizza slices in the city. Scott calls it "the pilgrimage pizzeria of NYC.". But with so many options in this city, finding the best can be tough. A good slice will have a thin, crisp crust, flavorful sauce that's well-balanced, and good-quality cheese that's creamy and not rubbery. Scott estimates that he has eaten 5,000 slices of pizza in the last five years (that's 2.75 a day). #FoodandDrink. Second-generation owner Gio Lonzo (Luigi's son, who now runs the place) has devoted the entire next-door storefront to a series of refrigerators all set to different temperatures, which house the dough at different stages of its fermentation. For example, two revivalist slice spots opened less than a year ago: the long-awaited Paulie Gee's Slice Shop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and Sauce Pizzeria in the East Village, which has some impressive bona fides. (To understand why a deck oven was so important for the evolution of New York pizza, check out our history of the New York slice. The L&B Sicilian slice really is its own thing. Best Pizza #2 1140 1st Avenue, New York, NY 10065. They've since added a second location on Amsterdam and 72nd on the Upper West Side, which also needed something like this. This article was created by the Serious Eats editorial team and brought to you by Capital One®. But these questions aren't really intended to elicit new information for the asker. (The obsession with flour and dough is typical of the revivalists: Find a celebrated new-school pizza maker these days, and chances are they're also well versed in bread-making techniques.). If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment. We researched this article over the course of six months. Step inside, though, and you're greeted immediately and enthusiastically by Louie. The clear middle ground between the old world Neapolitan pies and the modern New York slice. A city that is known for many things but especially for great slices of pizza. Too often, the story of decades-old mom-and-pop restaurants ends with the youngest generation "moving up" in the world and out of the business. With visits to Joe’s Pizza, Di Fara Pizza, Koronet, and Scarr’s, she sets out to find the absolute best slice of pizza in NYC. Because we didn't want to publish yet another pizza bucket list. Established in 1975 by Joe Pozzuoli, who is originally from Naples, Italy, the birthplace of pizza, Joe's Pizza is a "Greenwich Village institution" offering the classic New York slice for over 37 years. New York is a pizza lover's paradise. It's one of only two coal-oven pizzerias selling by the slice in New York—and a plain slice goes for only $1.75. As mentioned, one of our ground rules was that we'd judge only on plain slices, and these plain slices pass. From her all-time favorites Scarr’s Pizza and L’Industrie, to square slices at Paulie Gee’s and the classic Joe’s, these are Sire's picks for the best pizza spots in New York City. Headquartered in NYC and with over 700 team members worldwide, Slice gives you the opportunity to grow your career, focus on (inarguably) the best food in the world, and help to support small businesses — you can literally have your pie and eat it too! Moreover, it's an upside-down Sicilian, because the cheese (fresh mozzarella, in this case) goes on first, covered by an ample amount of crushed plum tomatoes seasoned with lots of garlic, basil, and Pecorino Romano. Ciccio's is known for its sesame seed crust, one of the few shops in New York where this is SOP. Those factors seem to have shaped the pizza he makes at Best, which is cooked in a massive brick bakery oven from the early 20th century—a setup that would have been familiar to the men who started the New York coal-oven giants Totonno's, John's, and Patsy's (though Best uses wood as fuel). For the longest time, I mistakenly believed that a grandma was simply a "thinner Sicilian," one that typically had a lot of garlic (but sometimes not) and that often had the sauce painted on in diagonal stripes (but not always). He may have lost a step, but so does every great athlete before they retire. "It's not an Italian machismo thing; it's more like, this Italian guy making New York–style pizza, but in a way he would do naturally, so his ricotta dabs are more floral-looking—it's just a really cool, good pie, in a tiny, 300-square-foot space." To fully capture this moment in the evolution of the slice, I enlisted a couple of co-conspirators, Adam Kuban and Scott Wiener, both of whom share my passion for the slice. There are the cops—it is very cop-heavy—picking up dinner for themselves and colleagues. It's the best deal in the city for traditional, good New York–style pizza. International pizza consultant Anthony Falco says … It's all topped sparingly with whole-milk mozzarella and grated cheese, and when you add up all the details, it makes for a diminutive slice of heaven in Throgs Neck in the Bronx. Square slices are slowly gaining traction on the classic triangle — and some are ranking among the best pizza in NYC. #FoodandDrink . I and my like-minded pizza-nerd friends, Adam Kuban and Scott Wiener, have been working on a definitive list of the best places to enjoy a slice of pizza in New York City and, in the process, have sought to determine what, exactly, the state of the NYC pizza slice is in 2018. As noted pizza guys, all of us are often asked, "What's the best slice in the city?" Pepperoni slice … The standard New York-style pizza takes a minimalist approach to creating wonderful flavors. They're not using fresh mozzarella on the regular pie anymore, and the fistfuls of freshly grated Grana Padano were replaced by pre-grated Romano after Dom's old counter-mounted rotary grater broke and he was unable to find a replacement. !” more, “Some of the best pizza I've ever had. Tommy DeGrezia and Matthew Porter opened Sofia in 2016 in an area of Manhattan that sorely lacked a fine slice. In the end, we decided on plain slices only, but we did allow ourselves to consider any style commonly served in NYC slice joints—regular* (i.e., round, cheese-and-tomato-sauce-only pizza); Sicilian (a thick, rectangular, raised-dough pan pizza); and grandma (like Sicilian, but with dough that's not left to rise). But it's just not in the same universe as the grandma there. It makes for a fantastic plain slice with tons of flavor. 39th st between 51st International pizza consultant Anthony Falco … Rizzo’s Fine Pizza. That is what we mean by Beloved Neighborhood Faves. They're all good. A good New York slice is something more. A red pie will typically have an uncooked tomato "sauce" (really, uncooked crushed tomatoes that have been lightly seasoned with salt); white pies forgo sauce and typically add dollops of ricotta. Greenwich Village, Manhattan. Located across from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, the place is always busy, so you're all but guaranteed a fresh slice that hasn't been sitting. When it's available and fresh from the oven, the pizza at Mama's Too is fantastic. Pizza Station. The Sicilian, which a lot of people prefer to the regular slice, was dense and tough. Some comments may be held for manual review. The crust on the regular slices is thin yet pliable, with a satisfyingly crisp-springy texture and great hole structure. When it opened in 2009, Kesté Pizza & Vino was at the forefront of NYC’s Neapolitan pizza movement. The fact that the dollar slice has remained a city staple is amazing in and of itself. Jasmin Suknanan. The juicy, fennel-studded pork, applied by the fistful, comes from S&D Pork … Joe's is so consistent in all its locations (a bunch of NYC shops and one in Shanghai) that I have dreams of it replacing every mediocre Famiglia in airports and malls and train stations everywhere. But when current owner Massimo Laveglia took over in early 2017, he changed everything but the name, overhauling the pizza while steadily building a reputation for stellar pies and slices. The winner for best of the best pizza in New York City goes to Joe's. Probably not. * Once known as "Neapolitan," until the great traditional-Neapolitan revival of the 2000s. He's also a pizza consultant, developing pizza programs at pizzerias, restaurants, and bars. ), That oven will be a deck oven cranked to around 550°F (288°C), most often gas-fueled in New York, but electric models are making inroads. Welcome to NYC.....” more, “The best pizza I've ever had!! Located in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, Kiss My Slice is an authentic New York City pizzeria serving up pizza the way it’s supposed to be. The lists here are largely in alphabetical order instead of ranked, with one exception (Louie's, in the "Neighborhood Favorites" portion of the list). 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