On our last visit to New York City, we were there with one sole purpose: to eat all the pizza possible. When you’ve visited a city multiple times, seen all the top sights, visited the highly rated restaurants and sought out all those fabulous views, sometimes you’re looking for something a little activity rather than a destination. Something hyper-local. And for us, that was creating our own New York City Pizza Tour! And while any pizza tour of New York City is bound to be incredible, we decided to put a different spin on ours. And that was to sample some of the Best Grandma Pizza in New York!
After a week-long search across the city, I bring you this self-guided pizza tour! With this guide, you find and eat all these delicious slices on your next visit to the Big Apple! Don’t get me wrong, I love a triangle slice, but there are lots of those food tours out there! And I wanted to create something a little different. And trust me, you’ll totally fall in love with the grandma pizza if you’ve never had one before.
A Grandma Pizza is a distinctly New Yorkian invention. It made a name for itself on Long Island in the 1970s. Back then, restaurants were tired of making trendy circular pies and longed for a slice of nostalgia. So what did they do? Go back to the cookbooks and memories they cherished of their grandmother’s home-cooked pizza.
A massive congregation of Italian immigrants arrived to Long Island in the 1880s. When these women landed on these new shores, they didn’t have almost anything to their name. Knowing cooking was the best way to preserve their heritage, they longed to whip up a traditional pizza to have a slice of home. But they didn’t have access to a coal pizza oven. And without the ovens, they couldn’t make the traditional round pies they used to cook back home in Italy.
But, they would not let this lack of tools defeat their quest. Instead, they used simply what they had at home. A sheet pan and a regular oven. The ingredients on top of the pizza were also humble. Homemade tomato sauce was the star of the show, along with fresh cheese and a green leaf of basil. These were the pizzas many restaurant owners grew up eating before opening their own joints. In the 1970s, they wanted to bring these slices back. And this time, sell them to everyone to let them get a taste of grandma’s delicious pizza. Hence the name. So before you tell me that these slices aren’t “traditional” New York pizza, I’d say that the grandma slice is even more hyper-local than the triangle street slices. One was brought to New York from Italy, the other was born right here in NYC.
As mentioned, grandma pizzas are made not in circular pans but in deep sheet trays. The dough for a grandma’s pizza is nice a thick! Almost like focaccia. This is the slice for you for someone who loves the bread part of pizza! The thick dough is instrumental in soaking up all that delicious tomato sauce they pile onto the pizza. You will find some grandma pizzas made in the Sicilian style, with thin crusts, but those are just as delightful.
To me, a great-tasting sauce is another key element that takes the grandma pizza to another level. Tangy and fresh, with nice dollops of sauce. Unlike regular triangular slices, the cheese is there to compliment the sauce, not overwhelm it.
Lastly, a serving of basil freshens the entire dish and lightens the heaviness you sometimes get with thick pizzas. Once cooked, the grandma’s pizza is served in rectangular slices. The corner slice is the most coveted of all the parts of the pizza as you get that nice crispy edge on two sides, a real pièce de résistance.
Despite being one of the original dishes introduced by Italian immigrants, the grandma pizza has really only caught on throughout the city in the last 20 years. In the 70s, it stayed mainly on Long Island, but today, you can find it everywhere! And it is one of the city’s most popular slices in pizza shops. Often selling out long before the other pies. This Pizza Tour of New York will show you where to get the best grandma slices in the city. I’ve organized the different stops into their various neighbourhoods so you can plan your day around them. Spend a day in Brooklyn or an afternoon in Williamsburg. Use these locations to etch out your rough itinerary. And use the time between meals to explore the neighbourhoods more for yourselves!
All the pizza stops on this list sell individual slices of pizza. I went through many other guides of the best pizza in New York that only featured whole pies. And while I’m sure they’re delicious, whole pies almost always mean a sit-down experience. Or just the need to eat an entire pizza. If you’re travelling with a big group, this might work. But smaller groups will find it harder to fit in as many stops if they’re required to eat an entire pizza every time.
Buying individual slices also means these stops on the New York City Pizza Tour can be as quick as you want. If you want to down your pizza and get on the road, so be it! But if you’d rather sit down for a bit, you can do this too! Options for all! If you’re not a huge eater, get one slice, and share it between two people. That way, you can easily fit more slices from different locations across town in one day. We would frequently order just one slice to share and almost everywhere we went offered to slice it down the middle for us!
One of the things that really took our pizza tour to the next level was rating them along the way! Who had the best crust, the tastiest sauce, the perfect atmosphere, and the most unique toppings? After making a little scorecard we could determine which places were whose favourites! It’s such a fun way to get the conversation going and make more of an event out of the entire tour! Obviously, everyone will have their own opinion about their favourite kind of pizza, and these were just my favourites. But hopefully, you will love the ones we found for you!
Another huge bonus to this type of tour is the price! New York City is an expensive best to travel. But all of these slices on tour are under $6. So it’s easy to get really full for really cheap!
Brooklyn is my favourite place in the city to come for pizza. The streets are such a dream to walk around, and there is no shortage of incredible architecture, chic cafes and awesome shops. But best of all, is the pizza. Sal’s Pizzeria is one of those Brooklyn establishments that feels like it hasn’t changed in 50 years. This place is CASH ONLY; that’s how old school they really are. Sal’s is as unpretentious as it gets without compromising on quality.
The sauce here is amazingly tangy. Made with fresh, chewy tomatoes, onions and garlic. But to make the pizza that much more interesting, they add a few dollops of pesto sauce. This really amps up the flavour. Sitting outside with a couple of glass soda bottles makes you feel like stepping back to a simpler time. The perfect way to spend the afternoon.
BONUS: Walk to Court Pastry Shop across the street for an authentic cup of Italian Ice. Court Pastry Shop has been open for almost 75 years and is a slice of Brooklyn’s history!
The Di Fara Pizza shop is a bit of a trek to get to, located in the Midwood neighbourhood of Brooklyn. But it’s one of those places worth the effort to find. Thankfully the Q train has a station right outside the restaurant at Avenue J. So it’s still very accessible by public transit. Di Fara Pizza has been open here since 1965. It was started by the De Marco family, who immigrated from Italy. And ever since opening, their pies has been legendary.
Their grandma slices have the most impeccably caramelized crust with just the right amount of crunch and burn. The huge dollops of sauce are the ideal compliment to the crispy dough. This is the freshest pie you can ask for. The tomatoes tasted like they were plucked from the plant only moments before and yet embued with such herby flavours. Yes, sure, there might be a wait, but it’s worth it! And the people watching here in this quaint little neighbourhood is a great way to pass the time.
Table 87 made a name for itself off its coal-fired oven. The super-heated range cooks pizzas at 900° in under just two minutes! The result is this flavourful char that is other worldly. And while they might have a few different locations around the city, their flagship spot in Brooklyn is my favourite place to dive into one of their incredible slices!
The margarita pizza had the best tasting cheeses of all the locations we’d been to. Salty, stretchy and stupendous! I’m someone who really loves cheese, and the fact this place lays it on thick (literally) added extra points in my book! The dough was also one of the thickest, which helped balance out the extra cheese. Their outdoor seating in the middle of one of the charmingest parts of Brooklyn is icing on the cake. But if you visit when it’s chilly they have a huge amount of indoor seating. Enjoy a slice with a glass of wine or crisp Italian soda.
The newbie on the Brooklyn block is Gravesend Pizza. Aptly named as they are located just west of the famous Greenwood Cemetery. And their pizza is truly to die for. But let’s hope not literally. Gravesend specializes in a few different grandma-style pizzas but their upside-down pizza, served with the sauce on top, is my favourite. The tomatoes get carmelized slightly more by the direct heat of the oven by being on top. Leaving you with the tastiest pizza! The staff here were immensely kind and welcoming. Making us truly wish we lived just around the block so we could visit them every week!
Williamsburg is best known today as the centre of hipster culture. But historically, it was also home to a large Italian community. And the blend of trendy and historical cuisines results in some of the best spots in the city to get a slice! One of those places is aptly named Best Pizza! Restaurant owner Frank Pinello grew up on Long Island, where he was greatly influenced by his Sicilian grandmother’s cooking. Down in the basement, she would crank out traditional grandma-style pizzas, and Pinello wanted to bring those same delicious flavours to the public when he owned his establishment.
The pizzeria uses a 120 years old wood-burning oven to churn out some of the best slices in town. The wood they use in the oven really flavours the pizzas which come out of it. They are also well known for making their own fresh mozzarella in-house. And trust me, if you’re a cheese fan, you can really taste the difference. The crust here is both thin and bubbly, all at the same time. The flavours are simple and complex. This place truly is the definition of balance. It’s genuinely an incredible culinary experience and one you NEED to try. And honestly, the retro patio chairs out front make it feel so homely. Like you really are eating at your grandma’s house!
The exterior of Williamsburgh Pizza is one of the most iconic of all our destinations. Those old-fashioned red and white stripes simply call you inside! The Williamsburgh Pizza shop made a name for itself here in this trendy neighbourhood. But it wasn’t long before they started to expand to locations around the city. But their original spot in Williamsburg is my pick of places to try out these stunning slices! It just feels all the more authentic.
Williamsburg Pizza is the place to go for that delectable crunch! The dough is crispy, but the interior is chewy, fluffy and airy all at once! I also really felt like I could taste the garlic in their tomato sauce more than at other places. And I loved that addition. When we visited. they were out of the margarita grandma slices, so we got the pepperoni. I loved how the pepperonis got a little burnt just around the edges. It added such a dynamic flavour and was irresistible. Biting into this slice, the crunch echoes across the neighbourhood. Like a bat signal, calling out to other hungry pizza fanatics.
If you only saw pictures from this place, you’d never know all the slices here are VEGAN! I wanted to include at least one vegan option on this list. Vegan food is becoming increasingly more popular and if you’ve never had a vegan pizza before, THIS is the place to try one! Screamers are undoubtedly the most modern pizzeria on the list, leaning into the needs of the clientele that makes up the neighbourhood. As soon as you step inside you are greeted by these fantastically bright pink walls. Local artisan prints hang on the walls and band stickers cover the tiles. It’s a hipster haven.
If there is one thing that vegans have perfected, it’s bread. And the bread is best savoured in its grandma slices. The crust is huge and fluffy, and the sauce they serve is wonderfully favoured with their homemade garlic oil. I don’t know much about vegan cheese, but the kinds they used to simulate the real thing was super impressive. The perfect blend of creamy and salty, brightened up by those fresh slices of basil! Absolutely magical!
Over in Manhattan, you can barely go one block without seeing signs for pizza. While heading over to the theatre district before a Broadway show, we were on the hunt for a slice. I had monstrously low expectations as this part of town is my worst nightmare. Most of the area is just crowds of souvenir shops and tourist traps. But, I thought to myself, even bad pizza is still pretty good, so what do I have to lose?
We stopped into Kiss My Slice, thinking of it as nothing more than a stereotypical New York-style hole in the wall. No aesthetics or even a table to sit down on. It’s a standing room only! But as soon as we walked in, we were greeted with such friendly smiles. And I was really impressed with the variety of toppings on their offerings. But we went with the grandma-style pizza and were so surprised by just how delicious it was! The sauce was tangy and fresh, the crust was crispy but not dry. And the cheese had the perfect pull to it. Overall, having a good spot in the centre of town is so important. As a tourist, you’ll more than likely have to cross through this area around Times Square. And knowing where to grab a decent slice is key!
Vito’s Slices and Ices is a relatively new shop that came onto the pizza scene in Manhattan a few years ago. But the owners come with over 20 years of restaurant experience. They opened this place to honour old-school New York-style pizza. Made with hand stretch dough and specializing in grandma square slices! The shop gets a lot of their produce from local farmers’ markets, and this freshness is noticeable in the food! Despite being a relatively new establishment, the interior decor references old-school pizzerias of the 1930s. And I can’t get enough of it!
Their grandma’s slices are stacked! Definitely one of the fluffiest doughs we’ve had. Like biting into a pillow! The sauce here is unreal, and I think one of the best parts of the pizza. Unlike some joints that only sell one style of grandma, this place has three versions, including the upside-down Sicilian slice. I love these upside-down slices as the sauce really is allowed to sing and be the star of the show.
Okay, if you’re into bread, you need to hit up Corner Slice. Although this restaurant is deemed one of the more modern pizzerias in the city, it is doing it right. Corner Slice takes bread baking to the next level, using only artisan flour for all of its pizza. Their dough undergoes a 60-hour fermentation before it is stretched out to become the base for the pizzas. The result? A heavenly puffy and chewy crust with a depth of unrivalled flavour.
In addition, their grandma-style slice features three different kinds of tomatoes from New York, California and Sicily. The texture is rather pulpy, and while I’m NOT a pulp fan, even I was wowed by how flavourful each bite was. The pizzas are topped with sweet Sicilian oregano before they are served up to the customer, leaving you with an entirely unique-tasting slice in a chic, quick-service shop! Phenomenal.
Phew, I’m full just writing all this! But has me dreaming of going back to New York to get my hands on just one of those incredible slices. Thank you for joining me on this self-guided New York City Pizza Tour. Let me know in the comments which shop was your favourite or any others you think should be added to the list! The possibilities are endless in a city like New York City but I hope my guide has helped you find a few hidden gems!
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Best Grandma Pizza is the Fresh Plum Tomato and Basil, at Dino's in Riverdale. Hands down.
Thanks David! The one in the Bronx correct? If yes I have added it to my list! Thanks for the recommendation!