Great No Matter How You Slice it: Top 5 Pizza Places in Manhattan

But ask where to get the best pie in town, and you can be sure you’ll hear a lot of conflicting information. In a city where you can get a slice around practically any corner, it’s understandable that “the best” is a matter of some debate. But don’t worry―when you want the best pizza in Manhattan, you won’t go wrong at these five spots.

Lombardi’s Pizza

From now on, if anyone ever asks you what the oldest pizza place in New York is, you can tell them. It’s Lombardi’s Pizza. Since 1897, they’ve been making their pies in a coal oven, which makes for a thin, perfectly charred crust. With more than a hundred years of pizza-making experience at your service, you might as well get the Original, made with San Marzano tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella cheese, and topped with fresh basil and Romano. But if you want to throw on fresh wild mushrooms, sweet Italian sausage or roasted red peppers, no one is going to blame you.

Joe’s Pizza

West Village mainstay Joe’s Pizza is a lot like many other grab-a-slice-and-go pizza places in Manhattan—just better. The slices are a prime example of classic New York-style pizza—perfectly foldable, oozing with cheese, light on the sauce, crispy and fluffy in all the right places and roughly the size of your head. If you’re looking for a prime New York, pizza experience, Joe’s is the place to go.

Speedy Romeo

Following its wildly successful flagship location in Brooklyn, Speedy Romeo opened up a second pizzeria on the Lower East Side, finally bringing its slightly off-kilter version of New York’s favorite food to Manhattan. Speedy Romeo serves what’s known as St. Louis-style pizza, with a crunchy, super-thin crust topped with Provel cheese—a mixture of Swiss, cheddar and provolone. Add in the wild toppings such as Katz’s pastrami and smoked red kraut, and it’s pretty clear that there’s no other pizza in the city quite like it.

Prince St. Pizza

While pizza purists might balk at the idea of a pizza slice in any other shape than a giant triangle, Prince Street Pizza serves one of the best square slices in New York. These Sicilian-style slices are cooked in a brick oven for a crust that’s crunchy on the bottom and perfectly light in the middle. Of all the options on the menu, their signature has become the Spicy Spring, with its mildly spicy Fra Diavolo sauce, small, crispy pepperonis and fresh mozzarella.

Patsy’s Pizzeria

Patsy’s Pizzeria opened in East Harlem in 1933. Many years and probably somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion slices later, they still know their way around a delicious brick oven pizza. You’ll find some incredible specialty pies on their menu, such as the Napoletana, which comes with anchovies, fresh garlic, black olives, tomato sauce and grated mozzarella, but it’s still hard to beat the classic no-frills cheese pizza.

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