What makes New York a pizza city is not the number of pizzerias in it. It is the slice: the counter, the fold, the two dollars, the fact that a city of nine million treats pizza as infrastructure rather than as an occasion. The guide records both, because a set that was all Neapolitan restaurants would describe Manhattan's dining rooms and miss the thing New Yorkers actually eat. Three traditions run side by side here - the Neapolitan houses that arrived with a disciplinare, the slice joints that descend from them and left the rules behind, and the Sicilian square that came off the same migration as Detroit's pan and Palermo's sfincione.
Anthony Mangieri makes every ball of dough by hand and shapes, tops and bakes every pizza himself in a wood-fired oven that fires only three pies at a time. He works in the Neapolitan style, on a naturally leavened dough he has been tinkering with for over three decades.
Verified 2026-09-18
Ribalta is run by Neapolitan founders Rosario Procino (previously of Kestè) and chef Pasquale Cozzolino, and in 2014 it was the only pizzeria in the city certified by the AVPN (Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana). It bakes in a wood-fired oven. A May 2025 fire closed the restaurant temporarily; its own site now shows normal operating hours.
Verified 2026-09-18
Don Antonio was opened in 2012 by Roberto Caporuscio with his mentor Antonio Starita of Naples' Starita a Materdei, founded in 1901, and is now run by Roberto's daughter Giorgia Caporuscio. It bakes at roughly 850°F in a wood-fired oven and is particularly known for pizza fritta (fried, then oven-finished dough).
Verified 2026-09-18
Massimo Laveglia, a Florence native, took over the Williamsburg shop in 2017 and built a proprietary flour blend — semolina, whole wheat, Type 1 and other varieties — milled to his own recipe in Italy, baked in a four-deck electric oven. It has since grown to a third New York City location on fresh ingredients and ideas rather than a change of method.
Verified 2026-09-18
Stretch Pizza was opened in 2023 by chef Wylie Dufresne (wd~50) and Gadi Peleg (Breads Bakery) as a chef-driven take on the classic New York slice. The original Flatiron location closed on 2 July 2026 after a three-year run; the brand now operates solely from the Williamsburg storefront recorded here.
Verified 2026-09-18
Dom DeMarco opened Di Fara on Avenue J in Midwood, Brooklyn in 1965 and personally stretched every pie's dough for over fifty years until his death in 2022. The shop still mixes dough in-house and bakes it the same day in the same three secondhand gas deck ovens bought when it opened; his widow and seven children, including Margaret Mieles, now run the original 60-year-old Midwood location.
Verified 2026-09-18
Frank and Dominic Morano opened Prince Street Pizza on 4 January 2012, in the Nolita storefront that had housed the original Ray's Pizza since 1959, upgrading to a 750°F deck oven that fits six pies. The signature Spicy Spring is a Sicilian-style square slice built on the Morano family's own sauce recipe, with a thick, crisp, fluffy crust, fra diavolo sauce and cup-and-char pepperoni.
Verified 2026-09-18
