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.

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.

Pride of Astoria founded in 1959, when slices were 15 cents, Rizzo’s serves a pie like no other in the city. The pizzas are rectangular like Sicilian, but with an ultra-thin crust that crackles when you bite into it, also sporting a normal density of very carefully applied toppings. This pizza is engineered and unique, and comes in dozens of topping combinations.

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.

Chef Mathieu Palombino and his crew have earned rave reviews for their fluffy pizzas at Motorino, which has three locations in NYC and several others in random Asian and Middle Eastern locals (including Kuala Lampur!). Even though the pies have Naples underpinnings, including use of a wood-burning oven, they are a thing unto themselves, especially with toppings like Brussels sprouts and soppressata.

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 smallish 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.

Lombardi’s is not the best coal oven pizza joint in town, but it is the oldest, and its charred pies do not disappoint. It’s often called the first pizzeria in NYC, and for this reason is regularly mobbed by tourists and pizza fanatics alike. The shop’s second location in Chelsea — not as good — closed during the pandemic. The little-praised clam pie is actually excellent, and compares well with Pepe’s in New Haven.

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.

Kesté is another of the city’s top places for Naples-style small pies, here concocted of extra-fine Italian flour, San Marzano tomatoes, and buffalo mozzarella. Owner Robert Caporuscio started baking this Southern Italian style of pizza in 2009 in Greenwich Village right across the street from John’s. It has since closed, but has continued with a second location near the South Street Seaport; his daughter Giorgia has become the in-house expert and is one of the few well known pizzaioli in the city. The menu features a pizza made with fried dough, as well as more than two dozen additional pie options, including those that are gluten-free.

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.

For years, “Bushwick pizzeria” was synonymous with Roberta’s, the national chain that started with a single location here in 2008. More than a decade later, lots of locals think of Ops. The pizzeria was started in 2016 by sommelier Marie Tribouilloy, now behind Ridgewood’s Foret wine shop; Mike Fadem, who previously worked for Andrew Tarlow; and Gavin Compton of Variety Coffee next door. Today, you’ll still find a brief menu of sourdough pies decorated with guanciale, broccoli rabe, and preserved tomatoes. The calzone, whose flavors change often, might be the best of all.

For the longest time our boutique Neapolitan pizzerias — making small puffy expensive pies with imported ingredients — adhered strictly to their Italian models, but gradually hybrids arose that combined elements of our native pies with those of Naples. Oma Grassa is a Ft. Greene newcomer that does just that. Pizzaiolo Adam Baumgart uses an electric oven with a temp that runs midway between gas and wood, allowing a Neapolitan supply with a crust more firm on the bottom that allows for more toppings, among other advantages.

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.

Naples-style pies seem to be everywhere, but there are other Italian pizza styles that are just now being accepted into the fold. One is the pinsa, an oblong pie that may have originated in ancient Rome made with a mixture of grains that bake up light and airy. The pinsa Romana is one of the best, with an Amatriciana on one side and cacio e pepe on the other, using two of the Eternal City’s favorite pasta sauces.

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.

Salvatore Carlino was raised on pizza, so it’s no surprise there’s been buzz around the chef’s first restaurant. His family operated Manhattan Beach’s Papa Leone’s, which closed in 2017, and founded Park Slope slice shop, Smiling Pizza. Carlino opened the doors on his own pizzeria in Sheepshead Bay roughly a year ago, and his margherita, white, and plain pies have been well-received. Try the vodka pizza, which uses the same recipe from Papa Leone’s, dating back to 1974.