Rapidly expanding Milk Bar's namesake pie is its breakout hit. It has a gooey filling that essentially consists of butter, cream, and sugar in a toasted oat crust. One slice is likely all anyone can down, but whole pies are available at any of the many locations for celebratory occasions.

The real specialty at this Hell’s Kitchen bakery is the sour cream apple walnut pie. It’s richer than the average apple pie, with thin slices of apple tightly packed in a sweet sour cream filling, while the thick, walnut-speckled blanket of crumb topping is a streusel lover’s dream.

Librae opened earlier this year, quickly becoming one of the city’s hottest bakeries with its “Middle Eastern roots and Danish technique.” In addition to its halvah croissants and fennel seed fig jam scones, this holiday season Librae is selling varieties like apple-cardamom, chocolate-date, and butterscotch-honey nut squash with toasted meringue.

This sweet, sunny cafe on Delancey Street offers a wide and ever-changing variety of pies by the slice. With a crumbly, buttery, never-soggy crust, they're all excellent, but the most exceptional is the lemon meringue. Get it (or any pie) with a generous dollop of the shop’s whipped cream. There’s a cafe location in Clinton Hill, too, that’s especially cute for dates or sweetening up doing laptop work.

This bakery from the team behind the hit nearby restaurant Frenchette serves a very classic selection of pies around Thanksgiving. There are apple, pecan, and pumpkin pies, all available for pre-order. Frenchette Bakery might not win any points for creativity, but they’re doing the classics well.

At Williamsburg’s beloved destination for fried chicken and baked goods awaits one of the city’s best banana cream pies. It sticks to the classic formula, with fresh slices of banana, smooth banana pudding, and a generous pile of whipped cream, but what makes it great is the crust: crushed Nilla wafers blended with butter and sugar, pressed into the pan and baked until golden and caramelized.

In 2020, Crown Heights boozy bakery Butter & Scotch shuttered its doors, reopening a new venture in Bed-Stuy focused around empanadas. For the holiday season Love, Nelly is bringing back the Butter & Scotch pies the team was originally known for. Find bourbon-ginger, apple-cranberry, and pecan. Pre-ordering is available online.

Abu’s specializes in the navy bean pie, a lesser-seen pie that is popular with the local Bed-Stuy Muslim community, particularly after attending the mosque next door. It consists of a layer of mashed navy beans, topped with a layer of spices, heavy on cinnamon, and not overly sweet. Beyond the navy bean pie, there are also sweet potato, pecan, and coconut custard varieties.

This Gowanus shop — which also has a small counter in Prospect Heights — offers a menu of seasonal, slightly off-the-beaten-path pies with a crisp and flaky all-butter crust. The fruit pies and custard pies are equally good, but a standout any time of year is the salty honey pie, which has a silky baked custard filling, a deep honey flavor, and a generous scattering of flakey salt over its surface. Or check out the matcha custard pie for an option that’s not too sweet.