If you’ve been reading our blog for some time, you’ve probably guessed that we like pizza.  We’ve written entire posts about our quests to find the best pizza in the Chicago area, New Haven, Philadelphia, Long Island, and Staten Island.  And of course we’ve sampled pizzas from around New Jersey, our neighbor and Miriam’s home state.  But New Jersey doesn’t lack for good pizzas, thanks to its large Italian-American population and it’s strong food culture, so in the past few months we went around the state once more to try and find some excellent pies and slices.  Here’s our results – which happen to all be meatless, for you fellow vegetarian pizza lovers out there.

We’ll move north to south on this pizza journey, starting with Brooklyn’s Pizzeria in Hackensack.  This place is steeped in a rich pizza history:  the founders are related to the man who opened Patsy’s in Harlem, which is one of the oldest pizzerias in New York City (we featured it here).  As the name suggests, this branch of the family originally opened a restaurant in Brooklyn but then decided to head out to New Jersey – this is the first location in the state, and there’s second in Ridgewood.  We decided to go for something simple here and got just this plain cheese and tomato pie.

Not too far away, we also tried Bruno’s in Clifton.  This place is tucked into an unassuming storefront in a strip mall, but over the 50 years it’s been around it’s received a lot of praise.  We decided to share a few slices there so we could try several different types of pizzas, including a margherita …

… a plain cheese slice …

… and a cheese grandma slice.

Moving a little bit west is Reservoir Tavern in Boonton, which opened in 1936 as a restaurant serving all kinds of food – but it quickly became famous for its pizzas.  There’s just one type on the menu, a plain cheese in three different sizes, but you can choose all different kinds of toppings to mix and match on your pie.  We went with hot cherry peppers.

Now down in Metuchen is Antonio’s Brick Oven Pizza, which has been a staple in town for almost 30 years and is also notable for its commitment to brick oven cooking.  There we decided to try their speciality:  this cucina-style pan cheese pizza, made simply with fresh mozzarella layered onto tomato sauce.

And finally, we ventured all the way down to central Jersey to check out Pizza Den in Princeton.  This place is the youngest pizzeria we visited – it was opened only four years ago – but in those few years it’s received a lot of praise for its streamlined menu of classic and inventive pies.  We decided to get two small pizzas so we could sample some different things:  on top is the Brooklyn pie, made with fresh mozzarella and basil on tomato sauce, and underneath is a plain tomato pie with basil.

It was interesting going to all these different places around New Jersey and sampling some such different pizzas:  you’ve got some places that are almost nine decades old, some places that are deeply connected to the pizza history of this country, and some that are newcomers.  And we’re glad, too, that we were able to get some good meat-free pies everywhere, which goes to show how vegetarian-friendly pizza can be and that you don’t have to give up interesting and tasty food when you go meatless.  If we had to pick our favorite out of all these places, it would be Reservoir Tavern, because the pizza was made in a really good New York style, as we’re used to, and there’s so many different toppings that you can choose from for your classic cheese pizza.  But all these places were delicious, and they’re all accessible by either bus or train, so if you’re looking to get out of the city or explore the great state of New Jersey, these five pizza spots are a good place to start.

Where We Ate: The Best Pizza in New Jersey

If there’s one thing New Jersey is known for – besides traffic, distinctive accents, and The Sopranos – it’s pizza.  Miriam grew up there and she can tell you that every town has at least one pizza joint that locals swear is the best in the country.  The amount of pizza on offer can be overwhelming, and it’s hard to figure out what places are truly outstanding – but Cyril is a food researcher at heart, and he did a lot of investigating to find these six spots that represent some of the greatest pizza the Garden State has.  We’ve visited these places over the past several years, so we can’t speak to what each pizzeria is offering right now during this pandemic (when indoor dining in New Jersey is still closed at the moment), but we encourage you to get out and try these spots so you can support local businesses and also, of course, sample some amazing pizzas!

Let’s start with a few places that are easy for New Yorkers to get to.  Just over the river, one short PATH ride away, is Razza Pizza Artigianale in Jersey City.  Razza is just a few years old but has already received a lot of praise for its use of local ingredients – including flour milled right in north Jersey.  The pies there are on the small side, so we got several in order to try a few different things.  This one is the burrata:

And here is the funghi, a white pizza made with a variety of different mushrooms:

And we also tried the panna, topped with arugula and cream:

Also in Jersey City, but a little more into the interior (you’ll have to take a bus from the PATH) is Bread and Salt, which makes a variety of different bakery items, including their Roman-style pizza.  In better times they sold this pizza by the slice, but right now they’re only offering a limited menu which rotates each week and is only available for pickup one day a week.  We were lucky to score a half-pizza last month while they were still on offer, although the only one they were making was this tomato pie, which we carried to a nearby park to eat.

Should you want to venture a little further into New Jersey, you can take a NJ Transit bus from Manhattan to Elizabeth, where you can then walk to Santillo’s Brick Oven Pizza.  Santillo’s has been operating in the same spot since 1944, and they offer highly customizable pizzas that let you pick the shape, toppings, and how long each one is cooked.  We tried two different pizzas there:  the 1948 tomato pie with grated cheese …

… and a 1964-style square pizza that was half plain, half topped with eggplant and green peppers.

Not too far from Elizabeth is the city of Orange, which is home to Star Tavern and their famous thin crust pizzas.  This place (which happens to be very close to where Miriam grew up) is so popular that when we went – mind you, well before the current pandemic – the line for a table stretched all the way through the dining room and out the door.  When we were finally seated, we got two different pizzas.  One was a regular with pepperoni for Cyril …

… and the other was a regular with hot peppers on one half for Miriam.

Now if you want to get away from north Jersey, you can go all the way down to the Trenton area to a town called Robbinsville, which boasts not one but two excellently rated pizzerias within walking distance of each other.  We made a Saturday of it and took a NJ Transit train down to Hamilton, then Ubered our way to Robbinsville to check out both these places.  First up was De Lorenzo’s Tomato Pies, which started out as a storefront in Trenton before moving to the suburbs in 2012 (there’s also a location right across the border in Pennsylvania).  We decided to keep things simple and go with just a tomato pie topped with basil.

Then we hopped over to Papa’s Tomato Pies, whose claim to fame is being the oldest pizzeria in the country that’s been continuously run by the same family.  They too started off in Trenton before moving to Robbinsville, and while we were there we tried two different pizzas, one for each of us:  here is Miriam’s tomato pie with hot cherry peppers …

… and for Cyril it was the signature mustard pie, which has spicy brown mustard underneath the cheese, with sausage on top.

We tried a lot of different types of pizza here, as you can see.  Most of these places are old-school and have existed for decades (or in Papa’s case, over a century), but we also got to checking out some newer places that are trying out different methods for making pies.  Razza, Bread and Salt, Santillo’s, and Star Tavern are all easy day trips from New York and accessible by either train or bus, but to get to De Lorenzo’s or Papa’s you’ll have to set aside a whole day and either drive or be willing to do a combination of train and ridesharing.  These are all cool places to visit if you want to be adventurous and are looking for something to do – and honestly, with very few things being open right now, chasing down good food like these pizzas is an excellent use of your free time.