Salerno native Roberto Paciullo’s Bronx trattoria in Little Italy serves wood-fired pizzas that have puffy brown crusts and floppy centers. Some pizza geeks think it serves one of the finer examples of the Naples-revival style of pizza in New York. While those pies are the main attraction, it also serves a great eggplant parm. A second location in the Flatiron District also generates excellent pizzas, but it lacks some of the cave-like charm of the original.

Head to this venerable pizzeria ensconced in a white frame house in the Schuylerville section of the Bronx for relatively doughy thin-crust pies. It’s a true neighborhood spot, around since 1959, and has snagged headlines for its white and sausage-topped pizzas — two customer favorites. Louie & Ernie’s serves both slices and pies, as well as a long list of wonderful calzones, but nothing else.

Mama’s Too! caused a sensation when it opened on Broadway on the far-north Upper West Side in late 2017, even attracting the attention of New York Times critic Pete Wells. In an impossibly small space, the luscious square slices are on full display, each of them thicker, greasier, and more lushly topped than the one before. The crusts are crunchy, too, and the tomato sauce is slightly sweet. Note the stylish cupping pepperoni.

This is a rare Italian bakery that specializes in pizza in a manner similar to the bakeries of Boston’s North End, as well as the standard cookies and pastries one would expect to find in such a shop. Head to the back counter for a square slice that has a thick blanket of melted mozzarella atop a tangy layer of tomato sauce, and try to arrive just as a pie is coming out of the oven, which occurs on a periodic basis.

Pizza feuds are the stuff of New York legend, and this place is the latest project of controversial chef Andrew Bellucci, who just walked out on another pizzeria in Astoria with almost the same name. He’s a veteran of Lombardi’s and Rubirosa, and his slices are somewhat soft and poofy around the edges, but thin and insanely crisp on the bottom, with generous toppings of sweet, dense sauce, and multiple cheeses, which make the slices salty. There are some faddish Sicilian slices that feature things like spicy honey, but just like Joe’s, the defaults are plain cheese and (cupping) pepperoni.

Founded in 1964, NY PIzza Suprema is basically a neighborhood pizzeria in an exceedingly advantageous location. That location is the southwest corner of Penn Station, and Suprema could have responded by lazily turning out average slices, but it rose to the occasion by upping its pie game with the lushest display of round and square product right inside the front door. Thick-crusted for a Neapolitan pie, gloppy, and filling, one slice is probably enough to take you all the way to Montauk.

John’s is one of the city’s oldest pizza operations, and it has retained much of its original New York character. Founded in 1929 by John Sasso, an alum of Lombardi’s, the restaurant churns out very thin, coal-oven-fired pizzas judiciously topped with a modest amount of sauce and cheese. Pizzas here are sold strictly by the pie (the awning famously says, “No slices”), with additional toppings like sliced meatballs, onions, ricotta, black olives, crushed garlic, pepperoni, ground sausage, and double mozzarella. Its franchised branches are not nearly as good.

Joe’s is home to the quintessential New York neighborhood slice: a crust that’s thin and crisp accompanied by even layers of cheese and tomato sauce, the latter intentionally on the bland side. The slice shop has been around since 1975, but only in recent years has it expanded in Manhattan and to Brooklyn. The line moves fast and service is quick. This is one of the city’s must-try slices, since it represents an old-fashioned norm for neighborhood pizza. Few toppings are offered, but the “fresh mozzarella slice” is a bland nutritious delight.

The Greenpoint pizzeria led by Paulie Giannone is known for baking creatively topped pies. Take the Benny Gee, for example, made with fresh mozzarella, Canadian bacon, and a post-oven hollandaise drizzle; or limited specials like the the “anise and anephew,” which has braised fennel fronds, guanciale, and anisette cream. Vegan pies are offered, too. Giannone opened a slice shop in the neighborhood that serves a less showy kind of pie.

Founded in 1979 by Ben and Debbie Aliotta, Famous Ben’s manages to channel a Sicilian focacceria in addition to turning out typical Neapolitan pies with a broad range of toppings. One of the more fascinating offerings is the sfincione — a thich rectantular slice topped with bread crumbs and pureed onions, rather than the usual tomato sauce and cheese. Other Sicilian recipes abound at this atypical neighborhood pizzeria.

Open in one place or another — the Jersey shore, East Village, San Francisco, now the Lower East Side — since 1966, Una Pizza Napoletana produces some of the most perfect evocations of pizzas as they are in Naples, the precursors of our own New York style. These are small pies — but not inexpensive — dappled with char, steaming straight from the oven. Only five or six are offered on any given day (Thursday, Friday, Saturday only), using scintillating ingredients. The current menu also has two apps and a handful of possible additions to the pies.

Nearly six years old, this pizza institution on a Lower East Side side street was founded by Scarr Pimentel, whose objective was to take the classic neighborhood pizzeria, and kick up the quality a few notches. Thus the round and square pies deploy artisanal ingredients — including flour milled in the basement — resulting is a real destination pizzeria, like Di Fara or Joe & Pat’s.

Owner Massimo Laveglia describes his Williamsburg pizzeria as a “slice spot,” but one that embroiders on the traditional concept of the neighborhood slice by offering a product quite distinct from the usual corner pie establishment. For one thing, the crust is of higher quality, with lots of snap, and for another, the ingredients — which include ricotta, burrata, spicy salami, and truffle oil — might seem over-complicated by neighborhood pizzeria standards. The result is a slice like no other.

The Roberta’s crew tops Neapolitan-style pizzas with exceptional mozzarella and meats cured on the premises. The restaurant has expanded to be so much more than a pizzeria these days, but the pies are still some of the finest in the city. For those who can’t handle the wait, a takeout counter is available nearby. A second Brooklyn location has opened in Williamsburg’s Domino Park.

To hear aficionados tell it, Grimaldi’s is not really Grimaldi’s — this second-generation coal oven pizzeria in Dumbo, opened in 1990, was taken over by outside interests in 1998 and moved next door. The old place, oven and all, was reopened by Patsy Grimaldi as Juliana’s in 2012, and now is turning out the same excellent coal-oven pies, with a sweeter tomato sauce, a generous strew of toppings, and a glove-soft crust that’s a little thicker than the coal-oven old timers like John’s and Lombardi’s.

Though the Bed-Stuy branch has only been open three years, the original was founded in Riverhead in 1975, and this place is a quintessential New York City neighborhood slice joint. The display of pies is especially regaling: The crusts are thinnish but still substantial, the sauce is a tad on the sweet side, and the toppings generously strewn. What makes Sergio’s worth listing are some of its innovations to the genre, including a wonderful garlic knot slice that arranges the miniaturized orbs along the circumferential crust, to spectacular effect.

Descended from a pair of excellent pizzerias in Howard Beach and Mill Basin (and a much older establishment in Bay Ridge), La Villa is Brooklyn pizza royalty, and this Park Slope branch seeks to turn out a bewildering number of varieties from its wood-burning oven. A stuffed pizza called Romana recalls co-owner Alfredo Di Scipio’s ancestry in Abruzzo, Italy. The double-crust pie, a type of pizza rustica, is filled with Italian sausage, pepperoni, cheese, and potatoes, and each bite is pure pleasure.

This Borough Park pizzeria of fairly recent vintage (2021) boasts some lawn furniture out front and tops its pies with halal meat. It cultivates a hybrid style of pizza that handily unites several New York City styles. The grandma slice, in particular, is admirable, with a thinner, browner, firmer crust than usual, excellent unsalty mozzarella, and a few fresh basil leaves. A square version features a thicker crust and pesto, in addition to fresh mozzarella and plain-ish tomato sauce.

Denino’s is perhaps the most famous pizzeria in Staten Island. Its most exciting pizza, the clam pie, is a molten mass of briny minced clams and mozzarella on a crisp, nicely tanned crust. The dining room is an extension of a barroom that originated in 1937 as a dockworker’s hangout. Denino’s expanded to Greenwich Village in 2016 — and the new place is just as good as the original.

A snappy, super-thin crust and generous fresh mozzarella make this longstanding Staten Island institution a cult favorite. Joe and Pat’s has been around since 1960, but in 2018 the pizzeria brought its pies to a wider audience. The family behind the restaurant opened its first Manhattan location in the East Village, serving not just classic Italian fare but cocktails, too.

L&B is known for its extra-doughy square slices. The dense, slightly sweet crust is topped first with mozzarella, then tomato sauce and a thin layer of Pecorino-Romano, before being slightly underbaked so the crust is a little raw in the middle. Some love it, others hate it, but this “upside down sheet” style is uniquely Brooklynite and Sicilian. The famed outdoor patio is one of the most charming pizzeria spaces in the city. For dessert, get the Italian spumoni, which comes in scoops in disposable cups and is meant to be squeezed into your mouth.

For diners seeking out a classic bar pie, Lee’s is worth taking the ferry to Staten Island and a ride on the light rail to the Dongan Hills stop to get. The low-key corner tavern near the station serves a small, wafer-thin pizza meant to be consumed with a pint of beer, attracting mainly neighborhood locals since it swung its doors open in 1940. Usually topped with a single ingredient in addition to cheese and tomato sauce, the pies are well-priced and come full-sized, too.