The 19 Best Pizza Places In NYC

L’Industrie sets the standard for a great New York slice at both their original Williamsburg spot and larger location in the West Village. Each bit of blistered thin crust puffs, then crunches, tasting more and more like the loaf of bread you bought at the farmers market thanks to a long fermentation process. Minimal tomato sauce and spot-on oven temperatures ensure the layer of rich mozzarella stays perfectly in place, while a stream of orange grease drips down your wrist. The difference between this and most other slice shops is that L’Industrie prioritizes ingredients imported from Italy. Each slice is topped with giant basil leaves and grated parmesan, and toppings like velvety burrata, slightly sweet pepperoni, or soppressata. This is simply the best single slice in NYC.

We could tell you about the way the pizzaiolo at this cash-only, BYOB restaurant rolls out the dough with empty wine bottles on a marble countertop in the candlelit dining room. But those details, along with the fact that eating at this Carroll Gardens institution requires lining up at 2pm, don’t matter for this guide. What matters is Lucali's thin New York-style pies, which have crunchy crusts, a serious sprinkle of minced garlic, and tomato sauce that’s a little sweet, a little tangy, and good enough to eat with a spoon. And yet it’s the piles of fresh basil that put the pizza here over the top—and make you feel the type of emotional connection your ex said you weren’t capable of.

Going to L&B is a rite of passage, and if you haven’t made the trip out to Gravesend for a square slice, we don’t think you can really call yourself a New Yorker. This place has been around since 1938, with an over-the-top Rococo interior for sit-down meals, and an always-bustling outdoor seating area with grab-and-go windows for slices, sandwiches, and spumoni. Don’t bother with round pizza here—you want their signature sauce-on-top square that achieves textural perfection. L&B also has a Dumbo location, so if you have visitors in town who want to take that photo under the Brooklyn Bridge, feed them some perfect pizza afterwards.

This is the sixth iteration of Una Pizza Napoletana, and we know exactly why this place won’t die. It’s serving the best Neapolitan pies in NYC—and possibly the world. Open three days a week, Una Pizza is now in a remodeled, candlelit room on the Lower East Side. Our go-to order is the margherita, but if you’re in the mood for something without sauce, try the bianca with anchovies and dip torn-off pieces of crust into the fishy and salty pool of olive oil that forms in the middle of the pie. Since all the pizzas have the same otherworldly crust, you can’t go wrong with whatever you order. 

We once went to Mama’s Too to eat their gas-oven Sicilian squares when it was 15 degrees outside. We had to wear pants under our pants, and it was 100% worth it. That was the first time we tried their mushroom pie as well as the cacio e pepe pizza with its four types of cheese and cracked black pepper—both of which will enrich your life in ways you have yet to fathom. And those aren’t even the best slices here. The square pepperoni is worth a trip across the city, and the house triangular slice with fresh basil is just about as noteworthy as the one at Di Fara. This tiny counter-service spot on the UWS has already become an NYC classic. They also have a second location in the West Village.

Chrissy’s, which began as a pandemic pop-up in a Bushwick apartment, has a brick-and-mortar in Greenpoint—and even if you see a line out front, it’s worth the wait. The New York-style pies are shamelessly saucy, with a crust so light and shattering that we'd happily eat the leftovers off a crust-hater's plate. They don’t do slices, which essentially forces you to bring friends and have a pizza picnic on the sidewalk. Things could be worse.

Di Fara opened in 1965, and they’ve been making legendary pies in their tiny South Brooklyn ever since. The late owner Dom DeMarco made the pizzas himself right behind the counter for most of that time, but now the pizza-making torch has been passed on to his family. The pizza here is still being prepared with several different kinds of cheese, olive oil, and plenty fresh basil. It has a crunchy crust that's notably salty, and each slice will offer a satisfying crackle as you fold it. Though the lines have died down, one slice here will still make you incredibly happy, and a second will make you want to get into a sleeping bag and watch a rom-com.

Ops perfected their sourdough long before everyone jumped on the naturally leavened dough-train. Each time we eat here, their wood-fired pizzas seem to get tangier. In terms of style, Ops’ pies fit somewhere between crispy New York and soppy-in-the-middle Neapolitan: each slice remains straight when you hold it in the air, but the crust puffs up like a balloon. Truthfully it doesn’t matter what you call the style. What matters is that you’re going to want to come to their dimly lit, sexy sourdough pizza emporium in Bushwick every week, like you owe them starter money.

You might think that Rubirosa is the only place that makes a super-thin-crust pie with excellent vodka sauce. News flash: Rubirosa borrows their recipes and style from legendary Staten Island spot Joe & Pat's. (The owner of Rubirosa is related to the team who started Joe & Pat's.) The crust here is almost as thin as matzoh, so we don’t recommend weighing it down with more than one topping. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It just means you can eat more cracker-thin pizza, which you will inevitably want to do. If you don’t live on Staten Island, this old-school restaurant is worth the trip, but there's also a location in the East Village.

If you want to eat at Lucia Pizza in Sheepshead Bay five days a week, that sounds like a fine idea, and we aren’t going to stop you. Just make sure that one of those days is Friday. That’s when you can try the clam pie, a weekly special made with chopped cherry stones, translucent cross-sections of garlic, and a white wine butter reduction. Like the rest of the pies at this retro-inspired slice joint, it has a thin, crisp, slightly chewy crust that’s puffy around the edges like a fresh-made zeppole. Squeeze a lemon wedge over the top, and enjoy. The slice with whipped ricotta and crumbled local Italian sausage is another box to check, and the spinach with bechamel is highly underrated. Lucia Pizza has two other locations—one in Soho, and another on the Upper East Side.

We tried to get an employee at this Flushing spot to tell us the secret to their pizza. They gave us a one-word answer: consistency. Open since the 1970s, this fluorescent-lit shop is still churning out simple, perfect New York-style pies for a steady stream of customers. Stop by for a whole cheese pizza, or try to snag a slice fresh from the oven. The crust is thin and crispy with a little bit of chew, the sauce is thick and not-too-sweet, and the hefty layer of cheese on top is bright orange with grease. Grab a table in the small, barebones space so you can eat your pizza as soon as it exits the oven.

Mano’s is not just a classic New York slice, but a classic New York slice shop as well. There are no servers. There’s no natural wine. If you pop in for lunch, there won’t be a tour group clogging the entrance. The Ridgewood establishment sports a standard-issue Italian flag awning, and it’s home to a perfect cheese pie with a thin layer of mozz that commingles with a simple tomato sauce, becoming one. There are, however, some fancy elements at work. The dough is fermented for days—resulting in a thin, crunchy crust—and the toppings range from garlic aioli and cracked black pepper to sweet caramelized onions swimming in provolone.

The very best part of the margherita pizza at this Italian spot in Rockaway Park is the sweet, garlicky sauce. It’s almost too sweet. It’s almost too garlicky. And yet it saunters gracefully down the tightrope. The pie’s crust lives in an impressive liminal space, too. Not quite New York-style and not quite Neapolitan, the bottoms and edges stay chewy despite being crispy and thin. This is the kind of pizza you text multiple friends about before you’re even finished eating your first slice.

Ace’s in Williamsburg makes the best Detroit-style pizza in the city. Their shop might look like any old slice joint, but it’s somewhere you can hang out, sip some wine or beer, and play Mario Kart on N64. While they also do Sicilian pies and slices, your first move at Ace’s should unquestionably be some iteration of Detroit-style. Keep it simple, and get your pizza topped with pepperoni—and if you’re with one other person, order a small. You’ll get four airy slices with a crispy cheese-webbed crust that will fill you with profound joy.

This Bed-Stuy spot sets itself apart from other slice shops by offering a bunch of uncommon toppings. You’ll see varieties like chicken and waffle, shrimp alfredo with black truffle, and lasagna, but the oxtail pies are the main attraction. There are three different kinds, and the sweet chili one comes loaded with crispy, tender shredded oxtail. The chewy crust tastes like a buttermilk biscuit, and it’s a good, understated vehicle for all the flavorful toppings. Most people get their food to go, but there are a couple of tables and a counter for standing. Lines often snake out the door, so it’s a good idea to get here early. Cuts & Slices also has two other locations in Queens and Manhattan.

This pizza spot opened in East Harlem in the 1947, then moved into a tiny brick building on the first floor of a house in Pelham Bay about a decade later. We don’t know who lives in that house, but we hope they get Louie & Ernie’s New York-style pizza as often as their digestive tract allows. Whether you order a whole pie or a slice on a paper plate, be sure to get your pizza with crumbly-salty sausage on top. Like the pies at NYC’s best old-school spots, these edges crisp up while the middle stays soft.

Rubirosa is one of Manhattan’s top Italian restaurants, and they've earned this distinction almost purely due to the quality of their pizza. In addition to serving perfect Staten Island-style, crackery crust pies, they also have gluten-free pizza that's somehow just as good. Whichever route you go, prioritize the vodka-sauce and tie-dye varieties. Reservations at this dark, bustling Nolita restaurant are inevitably tough to get, but you can always stop by and put your name in for a table. You'll probably have to wait for an hour or two before you're seated, but consider that time an investment into your happiness and wellbeing.

Lee’s Tavern feels like it’s frozen in an era before cell phones were invented. Every table at this 1940s-founded sports bar on Staten Island features at least one pitcher of light beer and a couple of thin-crust pizzas oozing cheese onto paper plates. The pies here are some of our favorite in the Staten-Island style, with slightly charred bottoms and crust bubbles you could break with a single little tap. Always order the clam pie, even if you were raised to think that mollusks and cheese don’t belong together. The mild, low-moisture cheese, fresh hunks of garlic, and briny clams work so well together that they should form an LLC.

It’s almost impossible to resist the gravitational pull of Scarr’s, both because of the hypebeast-y LES crowd that lingers out front, and because a Scarr’s slice will make you want to investigate how crust can taste so flavorful. Part of the reason the pizza is so good: Scarr’s mills their own grains in-house. Browned cheese blankets the surface of the slightly yeasty crust, with a zesty tomato sauce underneath. Stick with thin-crust slices, as we’ve found the square slices to be inconsistent, and you’re in for the best pizza you can find on the LES.