There are somewhere around eighteen hundred pizzerias in New York City and the overwhelming majority of them are fine. Fine is the achievement of the format — a cheap, hot, structurally sound slice available within a few minutes' walk of almost anywhere. The smaller question, and the more interesting one, is which pizza is worth crossing a borough for, and the answer turns out to depend on the oven more than on anything else.
Slice quality in this city is a function of the hour as much as the shop, and the good ones sell out. Ask Karpo which pizzeria near you is worth the walk right now.
Four ovens, four pizzas
The coal oven is the oldest lineage in the city, running very hot with a dry heat that produces a thin, cracker-edged base with dark blistering and a slightly smoky char. These are whole-pie institutions rather than slice shops, they are largely concentrated in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, and they are the direct descendants of the city's first pizzerias — Lombardi's on Spring Street, established in 1905, is generally cited as the first pizzeria in the United States.
The gas deck oven is what makes the classic New York slice: a wide, foldable, moderately chewy base, a modest cheese-to-sauce ratio, and a bake designed to be reheated to order. The wood-fired oven produces Neapolitan pizza — a small pie, a puffed leopard-spotted rim, torn mozzarella, ninety seconds at very high heat, eaten with a knife and fork rather than folded. And the electric deck oven, the most recent arrival, is what most of the city's newer, more precise pizzerias use because it holds temperature far more consistently than gas.
The slice, and how to read one
A great plain slice is a specific thing: the underside should be evenly browned with some charred spotting, the tip should hold when you fold it rather than drooping, the cheese should be browned in patches rather than uniformly orange, and there should be a small amount of orange oil pooling but not a slick. Joe's Pizza at 7 Carmine Street, trading since 1975, is the standard reference point for that description in Manhattan.
Timing matters as much as the shop. A slice cut from a pie that came out of the oven ten minutes ago is a different food from one that has been under a lamp for forty and reheated twice. The busiest hour at any given pizzeria is when its pizza is best, which is why the shop with a queue is the correct choice even when the empty one next door looks more pleasant.
The whole-pie destinations
Some of the city's most admired pizza is not sold by the slice at all. Lucali in Carroll Gardens operates on a first-come list that forms well before service and is best treated as a plan for the evening rather than a decision made at eight o'clock. Di Fara in Midwood built its reputation on Domenico DeMarco making every pie personally for decades, and remains a destination rather than a convenience. L'Industrie in Williamsburg does sell by the slice and draws a line down the pavement for it.
What these have in common is that the trip is the point. Nobody ends up at any of them by accident, and the pizza is calibrated for people who travelled. If you want the best pizza in New York, you are going to Brooklyn, and you are probably waiting.
The regional styles worth knowing
Two non-New York styles have established themselves here firmly enough to count. The Sicilian and its close relative the grandma slice — square, thicker, baked in an oiled pan, sauce often on top of the cheese — is a genuine New York tradition in its own right and is at its best at older neighbourhood shops in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. And the Detroit-style pan pizza, with cheese pushed to the edges to caramelise against the sides of the tin, has arrived in the last decade and is now done well in several places.
The bar pie, thin and crisp and small, is the other regional import to watch for, mostly from New Jersey and mostly served in rooms that are more bar than pizzeria. It is a completely different eating experience from a folded slice and worth trying once on its own terms.
Where the density is
Pizza is distributed unevenly across the city in a way that follows its older residential neighbourhoods. Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights and Midwood in Brooklyn; Howard Beach, Ozone Park and the older parts of Astoria in Queens; Belmont in the Bronx; and almost all of Staten Island have the highest concentration of long-established neighbourhood pizzerias in the city, and the standard at the median shop in those areas is higher than in most of Manhattan. A slice from an unremarkable-looking counter in Bensonhurst is frequently better than a slice from a widely recommended shop in the East Village, and it costs less.
Practical notes
Order plain first at any pizzeria you have not been to; toppings hide a multitude of problems and a plain slice tells you everything about the dough, the sauce and the bake. Ask for it well done if you like a firmer base — every shop in the city understands the request and most will oblige. Slice shops near major attractions charge more for a worse product than the same slice four subway stops away in a residential neighbourhood. Cash is still faster at the older counters. And if a pizzeria has a photograph of its pizza in the window, that is not a good sign in this city.
Tags: #NYC #NewYorkCity #Pizza #NYCPizza #PizzaNearMe #Slice #Brooklyn #Williamsburg #CarrollGardens #WestVillage #CoalOven #Neapolitan #FoodNearMe #NYCEats #PizzaGuide
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