Williamsburg has two halves and most visitors only ever see one. The Bedford Avenue version — the L train stop, the chain storefronts, the waterfront hotels — is the one that shows up in every guide. The other half starts a few blocks south and it is where people who live here actually eat. L'Industrie is the clearest single marker of the line between them.
The queue on South 2nd Street is a signal. It is pointing at a neighbourhood, not just a slice.
The counter
L'Industrie is at 254 South 2nd Street, and it is open noon to 10pm, every day. That is a genuinely simple schedule in a neighbourhood full of restaurants with split hours and dark Mondays, and it is part of why the place functions as a fixed point.
It sells whole pies at eighteen inches, cut into eight, and it sells by the slice with no booking and no ceremony. The slices are the reason for the queue. The regular and the pepperoni are the baseline; the burrata slice — a fresh ball torn over a just-out-of-the-oven slice — is the one people photograph, and the spicy salami with hot honey is the one they order twice.
The crust is thin and the base is properly cooked rather than merely hot, which is the difference between a slice that folds and a slice that flops. Sauces are made in house.
What the queue tells you about the block
South 2nd Street is not a destination street. It is low brick, mostly residential, with the Williamsburg Bridge ramp a few blocks west and the JMZ tracks running overhead on Broadway to the south. Nothing about the block markets itself.
That is exactly the point. The people in the queue have come from three different directions — the L at Bedford, the JMZ at Marcy, the G at Broadway — because the thing at the end of it is worth a walk. When a queue forms on a street with no other foot traffic, it is telling you something reliable about quality that a queue on Bedford Avenue is not.
Use it as a navigational anchor. If you walk south and east from here, you are in South Williamsburg proper: quieter, more residential, older. If you walk north, you rejoin the Bedford corridor within ten minutes. Almost everything worth eating in the area sits in the band between those two.
How to handle the wait
The queue is real and it is worst between 12.30 and 2pm and again from about 6pm to 8pm. It moves faster than it looks because the format is slices, not table service — most people in front of you will be gone in under three minutes each.
There is very little seating. Plan to eat standing or to walk with the plate. On a decent day the correct move is to take the slices toward the East River waterfront, about ten minutes west, where Domino Park and the Williamsburg Bridge approach both have public seating and a view worth having.
If you want a whole pie rather than slices, ordering ahead by phone is the sensible route; carrying an eighteen-inch box through a slice queue at 7pm on a Friday is not a plan.
Where it sits against the rest of Brooklyn pizza
This is a slice shop, not a sit-down pizzeria, and the comparison set is other counters rather than the wood-fired rooms in Carroll Gardens or Prospect Heights. Against that set it is at the top, and the specialty slices are what put it there — most counters do a good plain and a mediocre everything-else, and here the specials are the reason people cross the river.
The honest caveat: because the specials rotate and sell through, the slice that made someone recommend this place may not be in the case when you arrive. Ask what came out of the oven most recently rather than pointing at the one that looks best under the light. A slice that has been sitting is a worse version of itself, and the staff know which is which.
Practical notes
254 South 2nd Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Open 12pm–10pm daily. Slices and whole pies; pies are 18 inches, cut into eight. No reservations needed for slices. Very limited seating — expect to stand or walk. Busiest 12.30–2pm and 6–8pm. Specialty slices rotate and sell out; ask what has just come out of the oven. Nearest subways: Marcy Avenue (J, M, Z), Bedford Avenue (L), Broadway (G). Domino Park and the East River waterfront are about ten minutes west. Call ahead for whole pies at peak. Hours and menu change — confirm before travelling.
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Ask Karpo first
Want to know whether the South 2nd Street queue is worth joining right now, and what came out of the oven in the last ten minutes? Ask Karpo for the live wait, which specialty slices are in the case, and a short walk to the waterfront to eat them with a seat and a view.
