Best Pizza in NYC
The 10 best pizzas in New York, coal-oven legends to cult slices, pulled from our verified rankings across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island.
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The list
- 1Williamsburg · $$ · 254 South 2nd Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211
Also No. 1 on Best Pizza in Brooklyn → · No. 3 on Best of Williamsburg →
A stand-up counter slice shop out of Williamsburg that built a genuine cult following on nothing but obsessive dough work and Italian imports.
The Margherita with fresh burrata dropped on top after baking is the slice that launched a thousand Instagram lines, and it still tastes better than the hype suggests.
Order Margherita slice with burrata
Go right when they open or right before close, the line wraps the corner by lunchtime and the shop is standing-room only.
From @lindustriebk on Instagram, shown through Instagram's own embed player.
- 2Carroll Gardens · $$$ · 575 Henry Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231
Also No. 2 on Best Pizza in Brooklyn →
A candlelit former candy store turned whole-pie-only pizzeria where the wait is as legendary as the crust.
No slices, no delivery, no reservations, Lucali makes you earn the pie, and the char-blistered crust under a blanket of fresh mozzarella is why people still queue for two hours.
Order Classic cheese pie, extra basil
Put your name in and walk the neighborhood, arriving right at opening only gets you to the middle of a list that fills within minutes.
Photo: Praneeth Thalla, CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo: Praneeth Thalla, CC BY-SA 4.0 - 3West Village · $ · 7 Carmine St
Also No. 1 on Best Pizza in Manhattan → · No. 4 on Best of the West Village →
Map ↗verified 7w agoThe plain-cheese-slice authority of Greenwich Village, open since 1975 and operating on the same wide-fold formula that defined the New York street-corner pizza experience for two generations.
Because the slice is consistent at any hour of the day and any day of the year, the dough has structural memory you can taste, and you can stand outside on Carmine eating it without anybody watching.
Order Plain cheese slice, fold in half, eat standing.
Skip the line on weekends, it moves fast because nobody is ordering anything weird, and the per-slice price has barely moved in five years.
Photo: Rob Young, CC BY 2.0 Photo: Rob Young, CC BY 2.0 - 4Lower East Side · $$$ · 175 Orchard St
Also No. 6 on Best Pizza in Manhattan →
Map ↗verified 7w agoAnthony Mangieri's Naples-purist whole-pie counter on Orchard Street, with five pies on the menu, no toppings to speak of, and a wood-fired oven hot enough to cook a pie in 60 seconds.
Because Mangieri is one of the only American pizzaiolos whose dough fermentation, oven discipline, and ingredient sourcing actually match the AVPN Naples standard the rest of the city pretends to.
Order Margherita with a side of fior di latte.
Eat the pizza immediately when it lands, the cornicione (puffed rim) loses its open-crumb structure within four minutes of being out of the oven.
Photo: Transpoman, CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo: Transpoman, CC BY-SA 4.0 - 5
L&B Spumoni Gardens▲ buzzing
Gravesend · $$ · 2725 86th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11223Also No. 3 on Best Pizza in Brooklyn → · No. 5 on Best Old-School Restaurants in Brooklyn →
An 80-plus-year-old backyard-garden institution built around a Sicilian square slice and a cup of spumoni that Brooklynites still treat as a whole afternoon out, not a quick bite.
The square here still runs sauce-over-cheese instead of the usual order, a quirk that every other square slice in the city has spent decades copying without ever quite matching it.
Order Square Sicilian slice with a cup of spumoni
Order a small spumoni to go alongside the square slice, it's the pairing regulars actually get, not an afterthought.
Photo: Andre Carrotflower, CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo: Andre Carrotflower, CC BY-SA 4.0 - 6Port Richmond · $ · 524 Port Richmond Ave, Staten Island, NY 10302
Also No. 1 on Best Pizza on Staten Island → · No. 1 on Best Hangouts in Staten Island →
A 1937 tavern-turned-pizzeria on Port Richmond Avenue, still run by the same family four generations later out of the same storefront.
Everyone on Staten Island has an opinion about pizza, and nearly all of them start here. The crust holds its shape at the tip and shatters at the edge, a balance most kitchens never quite land.
Order The M.O.R., meatball, onion, ricotta.
Order more pie than you think you need; portions are thin enough that two people go through one without noticing. Ralph's Famous Italian Ice is right across the street for after.
Photo: H.L.I.T., CC BY 2.0 Photo: H.L.I.T., CC BY 2.0 - 7Lower East Side · $ · 35 Orchard St
Also No. 3 on Best Pizza in Manhattan →
Map ↗verified 7w agoA Lower East Side counter opened in 2016 by Scarr Pimentel that mills its own flour in-house, rare for a slice shop, and helped launch the modern New-York-slice revival.
Because the dough has a deeper toasted-grain flavor than anywhere else in this list, the pepperoni cups char correctly under the cheese, and the room itself looks like a 1976 set.
Order Plain cheese slice followed by the pepperoni square.
Sit in the back booth if you can, it is one of the few NY slice spots that doubles as an actual hangout instead of a takeout window.
Photo: Kidfly182, CC BY 4.0 Photo: Kidfly182, CC BY 4.0 - 8Midwood · $$ · 1424 Avenue J, Brooklyn, NY 11230
Also No. 3 on Best Old-School Restaurants in Brooklyn → · No. 5 on Best Pizza in Brooklyn →
The Avenue J pizzeria that turned a father-and-sons operation into a decades-long pilgrimage site for pizza obsessives from every borough.
Dom DeMarco is gone, but the family kept the recipe, the scissors-cut basil, and the finishing drizzle of olive oil exactly as intoxicating as they've always been.
Order Original square slice
Go on a weekday afternoon, weekend lines can run over an hour and the shop only fits a handful of people at a time.
Photo: Psychocadet, CC BY-SA 3.0 Photo: Psychocadet, CC BY-SA 3.0 - 9Castleton Corners · $$ · 1758 Victory Blvd, Staten Island, NY 10314
Also No. 2 on Best Pizza on Staten Island →
A Castleton Corners institution since 1960, opened by two brothers from Naples and widely credited with codifying the flat-edge, cracker-thin Staten Island style.
The crust is rolled thin enough to see light through, yet the sauce still caramelizes at the bare edges where the cheese doesn't quite reach, a trick most places spend decades chasing.
Order The vodka pie, or the Tri Pie split three ways with pesto swirled in.
Get the vodka pie fresh out of the oven rather than reheated; it has a narrow window where the sauce is at its best, and weekend nights sell through it fast.
From @joeandpats on Instagram, shown through Instagram's own embed player.
- 10West Village · $$ · 278 Bleecker St
Also No. 4 on Best Pizza in Manhattan →
Map ↗verified 7w agoA coal-oven whole-pie institution open in the same Bleecker Street storefront since 1929, with no slices, no reservations, and aggressively scarred wooden booths.
Because the coal char on the bottom of the pie is something a gas oven literally cannot replicate, the sausage is crumbled large enough to feel like dinner, and the whole experience is unchanged across four decades.
Order Half-sausage, half-mushroom whole pie with a side of garlic bread.
Bring cash and bring patience, they only take cards reluctantly and the wait at 7 p.m. on a Friday is what it is.
Photo: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0
Good to know
- What is the best pizza in NYC right now?
- Our current No. 1 is L'Industrie Pizzeria in Williamsburg, whose burrata-topped Margherita slice built a cult following on obsessive dough work. Lucali in Carroll Gardens and Joe's Pizza on Carmine Street round out the podium.
- What pizza styles does New York do best?
- The fold-in-half street slice (Joe's Pizza), Sicilian squares with sauce over cheese (L&B Spumoni Gardens), coal-oven pies (John's of Bleecker Street, baking since 1929), and Naples-standard Neapolitan (Una Pizza Napoletana).
- Do I need a reservation at any of these?
- Mostly no; the slice counters are walk-in. Lucali takes no reservations and the line forms before the doors open, and John's of Bleecker Street is whole-pie, walk-in only.
- How much should I expect to spend?
- Most slice counters on this list sit in our lowest price tier. Whole-pie rooms like Lucali and Una Pizza Napoletana cost more per person.