I’m back! Thank you to Tanya Sichynsky and Sara Bonisteel for stepping in to cover for Becky and I as we took some much-needed vacations and worked on our exhaustive lists of the city’s best bagels and best pizzas.
Speaking of pizza: Every year since I started this newsletter in 2022, I’ve put together a State of Pizza, a yearly report on pizza goings-on around the city. There have been some exciting developments — Durian and Japanese eel on pizza! Real Mexican pizza! A pizza spot in a subway station! — but in researching and eating my way through this pizza list I found myself falling back in love with no frills, old-school pizzerias.
A Queens original
Because I have a car, I assigned myself Queens and the Bronx. One afternoon I decided to feed two birds with one scone and that’s how I ended up at Lucia Pizza in Flushing on an unseasonably warm fall afternoon. Half of the beauty of visiting Lucia, open since 1962, is how well it still fits into a neighborhood that has undergone an incredible shift in demographics to become the city’s most bustling Chinatown.
When I dropped by, teenagers, older Chinese women and families were all hurriedly digging into the restaurant’s very classic New York slices, all displayed on an old school letter board behind the counter. Hurriedly because Lucia is the size of a postage stamp and just the spot to pop into after a day of shopping at the New World Mall across the street. (I highly recommend the classic cheese slice or the Sicilian slice with pepperoni.)
Pesto pizza worth the trip
After grabbing a bite at Lucia, I braved the beautifully twisty Jackie Robinson Parkway to get to Kew Gardens and check out Dani’s House of Pizza, open since 1959. There, I sat at the counter and watched the hardest working man in pizza, a longtime employee named Geraldo, crank out pie after pie by himself with astonishing speed and efficiency.
My jaw dropped as he pulled the restaurant’s pesto pizza, an herby and cheesy white pie served on a thin, crackly crust. While I engulfed that slice, a customer explained to his two kids that the sauce at Dani’s, which leans sweet, is “really special.” He was right. You wouldn’t think sweet tomato sauce would work, but it plays very nicely with the rich umami of mozzarella. For those taking public transit, the Kew Gardens-Union Turnpike station on the E and F lines is the nearest stop.
The margherita ideal in the Bronx
A few days later, I took the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to the sleepy Country Club neighborhood in the Bronx to visit Louie & Ernie’s Pizza. There must have been something in the water in ’59 because that’s also the year this particular neighborhood institution opened. And it’s so small that you might blink and miss it, but once you’ve descended into its cozy depths you won’t soon forget it.
I came with only one slice in mind — the sausage slice featuring freshly made pebbles of pork sausage over a cheese pizza — but at the recommendation of an employee, I also ordered a margherita slice. Whatever you imagine the ideal slice of margherita pizza to be, this is it: tomato-rich with fresh basil shining through. Add to it a Mets playoff game on a corner TV and old guys from the neighborhood catching up, and you’ll realize that while all versions of New York are authentic — yes, even the neighborhoods overrun with transplants and tourists — this may be the realest slice of New York you can find.
Reader Question of the Week
I would like to take some friends out for a very fancy meal as a thank you present. These friends always find a way to pay, and I am worried that they will succeed again. Can you recommend a restaurant where I can prepay to avoid this? — Jack N.
Try a restaurant like Atomix or Clover Hill — both on the reservations site Tock — that requires you to pay up front. Alternatively you can take a page from my sister’s book: She pretends to go to the bathroom near the end of the meal and pays the check out of view. It works every single time and it drives her in-laws crazy.
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