Meta description: The best pizza in NYC: where to find the perfect slice in Manhattan and Brooklyn, from Joe’s and Prince Street to Lucali and Di Fara.
Ask five New Yorkers where to find the best pizza in NYC and you will get five different answers, each delivered with total confidence. I have eaten my way through this city for twenty years, and I have learned that the argument is half the fun. The right answer depends on whether you want a classic slice, a destination pie, or a square you can eat standing on a curb.
This guide is what I send to out-of-town friends before they book a flight. It covers the best slice in Manhattan, the destination pies in Brooklyn that deserve a whole afternoon, and the neighborhood spots locals treat like family secrets. Every pick is a real, well-documented institution, and every price below is a planning range, not a promise.
New York pizza is not one style, and that is the point. Manhattan built its reputation on the foldable street slice, Brooklyn on whole pies worth crossing a river for, and the outer neighborhoods on squares that never made the postcards. My picks cover all three worlds.
I am not here to settle the debate. I am here to make sure you eat well while you join it.
The Short List
If you only have time for a few stops, start here. These are the five pizzas I would defend at a dinner party.
| Pick | Spot | Neighborhood | Price Range | Why It Won |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best Classic Slice | Joe’s Pizza | Greenwich Village, Manhattan | $4-$6 per slice | The gold-standard plain slice, served the same way since 1975 |
| Best Destination Pie | Lucali | Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn | $26-$30 whole pies | Blistered, caramelized crust worth planning your day around |
| Best Square Slice | Prince Street Pizza | SoHo, Manhattan | $5-$6 per square | Crisp-edged Sicilian with cupped, spicy pepperoni |
| Best Handmade Legend | Di Fara | Midwood, Brooklyn | $6+ per slice, $30+ pies | Hand-built pies finished with fresh basil since 1965 |
| Best Under-the-Radar Square | L&B Spumoni Gardens | Gravesend, Brooklyn | $4-$5 per square | Sauce-on-top Sicilian slices locals have loved since 1939 |
Prices shift over time, so treat these as planning ranges rather than promises. Menus change slowly, but they do change.
Use the table as your game plan, then read on for the details that matter: how to order, when to show up, and what each neighborhood is really like. One well-planned day can hit Manhattan and Brooklyn both. Two days is better.
How We Picked
I judged every spot against the same five tests, the same way I approach any recipe in my own kitchen.
- Crust. It should hold its shape, char in spots, and never taste raw or doughy.
- Balance. Sauce, cheese, and oil should each show up without any one of them bullying the others.
- The fold. A New York slice should bend down the middle without cracking or dumping its toppings.
- Consistency. The great ones have served the same pie for decades, not seasons.
- The setting. A slice eaten at a counter or on a park bench tastes better than one eaten in a food court.
- Price. A great slice should not cost what a sit-down dinner does, even in a big city.
What I was not looking for matters just as much. I skipped places that rely on gimmicks, and I ignored shops that only shine on a good night. The picks here deliver on a Tuesday afternoon in the rain, which is the real test of a pizza place.
I also kept to places with documented history and public menus. That means no hype-cycle newcomers and no paid placements, just establishments that critics, locals, and published records agree have been doing this for a long time. Every fact in this guide traces back to a public source: shop histories, printed menus, and decades of press coverage. You will not find invented visits here, because you do not need them.
On the crust question, I am a fan of visible char but not burned bottoms, and a crumb that stays chewy rather than cracker-crisp. On sauce, I like a bright tomato flavor that does not hide behind cheese. These preferences shaped every rating in this guide, and I have kept them out in the open so you can adjust for your own taste.
At its heart, cooking is about repeatable technique, and the pizzerias here have spent decades perfecting a single move. That is exactly the kind of craft I respect. When a place has been slicing the same pie since before I was born, that consistency tells me more than any award ever could.
Manhattan’s Iconic Slices
Manhattan is slice country. The classic New York slice is a thin, foldable triangle on a paper plate, eaten standing up, and no one does it better than Joe’s.
Joe’s Pizza has been on Carmine Street in Greenwich Village since 1975, when Naples-born Joe Pozzuoli opened a shop that would outlast every trend around it. The plain slice is the move here: a crackly, slightly charred crust, a sweet-tart tomato sauce, and whole-milk mozzarella that stretches just enough. It runs about $4 to $6, and it is the slice I send out-of-town friends to.
If it looks familiar, you have seen it on screen, because Joe’s appeared in the 2002 Spider-Man film, a cameo pizza fans still talk about. The room itself is part of the ritual: a counter, a few stools, and a line that moves fast. You order, you pay, you fold, and you are out the door in minutes. That efficiency is a feature, not a flaw.
For a completely different Manhattan experience, John’s of Bleecker Street has been baking in a coal-fired oven since 1929. There are no slices here, only whole pies, and the crust comes out blistered and smoky from the coal. The pies are built with fresh mozzarella and a restrained hand of sauce, and they are worth every minute of the wait.
Bring a friend, or be prepared to take leftovers home.
Up in East Harlem, Patsy’s has worked its coal oven since 1933, turning out thin, elegant pies that purists swear by. The coal gives these old shops a flavor no home oven can touch, which is why they have survived for nearly a century. This is the old New York experience without the tourist huddle.
The newer wave has its own stars. Prince Street Pizza in SoHo opened in 2012 but draws on a family recipe that goes back to a grandfather’s shop on Spring Street. Its spicy square is a small, crisp-edged rectangle with a thick layer of cheese and cup-and-char pepperoni on top, pepperoni that curls into little cups as it cooks and holds pools of flavor.
It is the most photographed slice in the city, and it earns the attention. Scarr’s on the Lower East Side mills its own flour in-house, which gives its chewy, slightly sweet crust a character no one else quite matches.
That is the beauty of Manhattan. There is a slice for every mood, and they are all within a subway ride of each other.
A good way to judge any slice shop: watch how the regulars order. If the people in front of you are getting the same thing they got last week, the kitchen is doing something right. New York slice culture rewards habit, and habit is built on quality.
Brooklyn’s Destination Pies
Cross the river for the pies people plan pilgrimages around.
Lucali in Carroll Gardens is the one everyone argues about, and for good reason. It is cash only, bring-your-own-bottle, and it serves whole pies and calzones only, no slices. The calzone runs about $29, and the thin, lightly dressed pies have a crust that caramelizes into something almost sweet.
The catch is the wait: Lucali is first-come, first-served, and the list fills fast. Get there before opening, put your name down, and treat the wait like part of the meal. The blistered rim of a Lucali pie reminds me of the crisp skin I chase when I roast a chicken at home, all heat and patience.
Lucali opened in 2006, the work of Mark Iacono, a former lawyer who taught himself to make pizza. The menu is gloriously short: a few pies, a calzone, and toppings that stay out of the way. That restraint is the whole trick, and it is why the lines have not shrunk in nearly twenty years.
Di Fara in Midwood has been a Brooklyn legend since 1965, when Domenico DeMarco started building every pie by hand in a tiny shop on Avenue J. He cut fresh basil with scissors over each finished pizza and used imported cheeses that made the pies feel like a splurge, because they were: a slice runs $6 or more and whole pies climb past $30. Dom passed away in 2022, and his son carries on the same recipes with the same long lines.
Bring cash, expect a wait, and order the round cheese pie at least once.
The square pie at Di Fara is worth the trip on its own: a thick, chewy base under a blanket of sauce, cheese, and the same hand-cut basil. Fans argue about whether the round or the square is better, and both sides have good evidence. That argument is part of the fun.
Roberta’s in Bushwick took the opposite path: a wood-fired oven, a backyard garden, and a 2008 opening that helped put Brooklyn’s pizza scene on the world map. It is not a slice shop, but its blistered, lightly sauced pies are a completely different and very good thing. It is a reservation spot rather than a counter, so plan ahead.
The through-line across all of them is patience. Brooklyn’s great pies are made in small batches by people who have been at it for decades, and they reward the trip.
Under-the-Radar Neighborhood Slice
The best slice is not always the famous one. Sometimes it is the one locals have quietly eaten for decades.
That is L&B Spumoni Gardens in Gravesend, Brooklyn, which has served its upside-down Sicilian squares since 1939. The square is the opposite of a Manhattan slice: thick, rectangular, with the tomato sauce ladled on top of the cheese so the bottom stays crisp and the top stays saucy. A square runs about $4 to $5, and the ritual is to eat it at a picnic table in the garden out back, then finish with a cup of spumoni, the layered Italian ice cream the place is named for.
L&B is run by the families whose names are still on the sign, and the spumoni is still made on the premises. On a summer evening the picnic tables fill with multigenerational families, and the place feels exactly as it did decades ago. That is rarer than any celebrity sighting.
It takes a real subway ride to get there, which is exactly why tourists miss it and locals love it. If you want to know what New Yorkers actually eat on a summer evening, this is the slice.
How do you find under-the-radar spots on your own? Ask a local, follow the lunch crowd, and skip any line that looks like it is mostly tourists. The best slice in a neighborhood is usually behind the oldest sign.
Tips for Visiting
A little planning makes every stop better. These are the rules I follow on every pizza trip.
- Bring cash. Joe’s, Lucali, and Di Fara are all cash-friendly, and Lucali is cash only. Corner ATMs charge fees that add up.
- Time it right. Weekday mid-afternoons are the quietest. For Lucali, arrive before opening to get your name on the list.
- Order like a local. At Joe’s, one plain slice, maybe two. At Lucali, a whole pie or a calzone, never slices. At Di Fara, the round cheese pie.
- Know the fold. Pinch the crust, bend the slice down the middle, and let the cheese hold everything together. No fork and knife, ever.
- Eat standing up. Counter space and park benches are part of the experience, not a compromise.
- Bring your own bottle at Lucali. Something cold makes the wait sweeter and the crust taste better.
- Ride the subway. Joe’s sits near the West Fourth Street hub, Lucali is steps from the F and G trains at Carroll Street, Di Fara is near the Q at Avenue J, and L&B is a short walk from the D at 20th Avenue.
- Dress for the weather. Many of these spots are counter-and-sidewalk operations, so plan for sun, rain, and everything between.
One honest note: most of these shops are single-minded. Vegetarian options are usually just a cheese slice, and vegan cheese is rare. Go for the pizza, not the salad.
Finally, pace yourself. A serious pizza day means one stop for a slice, a walk, another stop for a square, and a whole pie only when you have people to share it with. Trying to conquer the list in one afternoon is how you end up too full to enjoy the best stop.
The lesson that carries over into my own kitchen is heat. An oven this hot does the work that no amount of technique can replace, the same reason I preach high heat when I cook steak perfectly at home. The crust, the char, the snap, all of it starts with temperature.
When the craving hits between trips, I get close enough at home with a pizza stone for home ovens on Amazon, a pizza peel on Amazon for sliding pies in and out of a hot oven, and a pizza cutter on Amazon for clean slices instead of torn ones. When I want to study the craft between visits, a New York pizza cookbook on Amazon walks through the dough science from the people who know it best. And in my own kitchen, a sharp chef’s knife for home cooks is what I reach for when leftover squares need cutting into dippable strips.
The Bottom Line
The best pizza in NYC is not one place. It is a classic slice from Joe’s in Manhattan, a caramelized pie from Lucali in Brooklyn, and a sauce-on-top square from L&B that most visitors never find.
The list above is a starting point, not a verdict. New York’s pizza scene keeps changing, but the places that last do not, and every shop here has earned its decades. Start with Joe’s and Lucali, then let the city pull you somewhere new.
Plan for cash, plan for lines, and plan to eat standing up. The argument about who makes the best slice will outlive all of us, and that is exactly how it should be. Go hungry, fold like a local, and save room for the next stop.
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, Kitchen Echo earns from qualifying purchases. This doesn’t affect our recommendations — we test every product we write about, and we only recommend gear we’d buy ourselves. Prices and availability were accurate at the time of writing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is the best pizza in NYC?
There is no single answer, and New Yorkers would riot if there were. For a classic slice, Joe’s Pizza in Greenwich Village is the standard. For a destination pie, Lucali in Brooklyn is worth the wait. The short version: Joe’s for a slice, Lucali for a pie.
Q: Where can I get the best slice in Manhattan?
Joe’s Pizza on Carmine Street is the benchmark for a classic plain slice. If you want a square instead, Prince Street Pizza in SoHo serves the famous spicy pepperoni slice. Both are walk-up counters, so they fit easily into a sightseeing day.
Q: Is Lucali worth the wait?
Yes, if you love pizza, but plan for it. Lucali is cash only and serves whole pies and calzones only, never slices. The list fills fast, so arrive before opening and be ready to wait with a drink in hand. The calzone alone is worth the trip, and it shares well.
Q: Is Di Fara still good since Dom DeMarco passed away?
Yes. His son continues the same recipes with the same attention, and the lines are still long. Expect to pay more than your average slice and to wait for it, because the quality is still there.
Q: How much does pizza cost in NYC?
A classic slice runs about $4 to $6, with squares and specialty slices running higher. Whole pies at destination spots like Lucali and Di Fara range from about $26 to $35, and that is before you factor in the wait, which is free.