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: Some Good Illinois Pizzas
This past weekend we headed out to Illinois for a gathering of some of Miriam’s family and a memorial service for her grandmother. It was nice to see people, and to honor her grandma’s 97 years of life, and we also got to visit a few pizzerias with the whole crew.
If you know anything about Illinois and pizza, you’ll understand that we didn’t sample any of the typical kind of pizza we’re used to – instead, it was a weekend full of deep dish! Deep dish pizza was invented in Chicago almost a hundred years ago, and it’s now a staple across all of northern Illinois. It’s a style that’s a lot heavier and more filling than a thin crust New York-style pizza because each pie is cooked in a deep pan, which means that sauce, toppings, and lots of cheese are piled into the pizza to make for some pretty hearty slices that you need a fork and a knife to eat. Being from the East Coast, we’re not used to this type of pizza, but we’re always up for trying regional cuisine and visiting some highly rated pizza places, so here are three spots we enjoyed.
First up was Lou Malnati’s, a chain that started in the Chicago suburbs in 1971 and now has 60 locations across the Chicagoland area, plus a few restaurants in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Arizona. We visited their River North location, right near Lake Michigan in Chicago, and we customized our own pizza there – here’s a cheese deep dish with garlic and spinach sandwiched in the middle.
We also got a chance to visit Pequod’s Pizza, which has locations in both Chicago proper and in the suburb of Morton Grove (which is the one we went to). Pequod’s is consistently rated as one of the top pizza places in the U.S., so we were very excited to visit. Miriam got a cheese pan pizza with green bell peppers and sliced spicy pepperoncini …
… while Cyril got one with pepperoni and sausage.
And finally, we absolutely had to stop by a Giordano’s. Why? Because this is the most beloved of all the Chicago pizza chains – and as proof, we’ll tell you that on our bus back to the airport, almost every single other passenger had a take-out box of Giordano’s with them to carry home on to the plane. They’re most well known for their stuffed pizzas, which take deep dish to a whole new level: it’s made with two separate layers of crust, plus plenty of cheese in the middle and toppings scattered through the whole thing. We ended up going to their restaurant in Rockford, about 90 miles west of Chicago, and got to sample two different pizzas. First was their signature stuffed deep dish, which we added garlic broccoli and giardiniera peppers to.
And then Cyril also tried their Special deep dish, which has sausage, onions, green peppers and mushrooms buried under all that sauce and cheese.
It certainly was a lot of pizza, and we flew home with some slices in our bags to save for later. It was also nice to get a pizza change of pace – we’re so used to our thinner crust pies here in the New York area, but different kinds of pizza are good too! This is especially with deep dish, because that tall crust is a perfect vehicle for lots and lots of cheese. There are a ton more pizza spots we’d love to visit in Chicago on another trip, but for now these are the places that we really enjoyed with family.
Where We Ate: The Best Pizza on Long Island
We enjoy ourselves a good pizza, so we’re lucky to live where we live, because the New York City area – thanks to its history of Italian-American immigration – is home to some of the most well-rated pizza places in the country. We’ve had our fair share of pizza in NYC proper, but we recently decided to venture out and try a few spots outside the city. Today we’re going to feature some restaurants on Long Island that have some pretty good slices and pies. Interestingly, what we discovered is that each place is within walking distance of a Long Island Railroad station, so you could visit all these spots just by taking a train from the city. In any case, here’s our recommendations for good pizza on the island – just be warned that we do feature some meat pizzas here.
We’ll start off with Salvatore’s Coal Oven Pizza in Port Washington. They do whole pies only (there’s even a sign right when you enter reminding you not to ask for slices), so we got their margherita pizza topped with roasted red peppers – and it came to our table absolutely steaming fresh out of the oven.
South of Port Washington, and just east of the Queens border, is Eddie’s in New Hyde Park. Eddie’s specializes in bar pies, which are personal pizzas made on a super thin crust. Miriam got a cheese and tomato bar pie with chopped hot cherry peppers on top …
… while Cyril had a bar pie-sized Eddie’s special, which has sausage, pepperoni, sliced meatballs, onion, peppers, and mushrooms on it.
Also in New Hyde Park is Umberto’s, and we learned that the thing to get there is grandma pie slices. On the right here is a traditional grandma slice, and on the left is a grandma slice topped with fresh mozzarella, fresh tomato slices, and basil.
And we apologize for this incoming confusion, but we also enjoyed King Umberto in Elmont for some more grandma slices. Here’s a vodka slice, made with fresh mozzarella …
… and here’s one of their newest creations, a grandma slice with plum tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella, drizzled with hot honey.
Now if you travel all the way to the bottom of Long Island, you’ll find Gino’s in Long Beach. We opted for some more traditional slices there: one cheese, and one from their “special” pizza, made with pepperoni, sausage, peppers, onions, and mushrooms.
A little east of Long Beach is Merrick, where you can find La Piazza. There we got ourselves a combination of regular and square slices: here’s a vodka square (on the left), a grandma slice made with fresh mozzarella and plum tomato sauce (on top), and a regular Neapolitan slice (on the left).
Now so far all the pizza places we’ve featured have been in Nassau County, but if you’re willing to venture a little further out you can also check out Little Vincent’s in Huntington. They serve up traditional slices and toppings, but the thing they’re especially known for is cold cheese pizza. If that sounds weird or confusing, trust us – it’s really good! It’s a regular slice of oven-fresh pizza topped with a handful of chilled shredded mozzarella. At Little Vincent’s they’re pretty generous with that extra cheese on top, which makes for an excellent contrast with the warm pizza underneath.
If we had to pick, we’d say that King Umberto was our favorite out of all these places – but we really did like them all. We got to try a bunch of grandma slices, some traditional as well as more unusual toppings, a bar pie, a coal oven pie, and one cold cheese slice. We don’t get out to Long Island all that often, and when we do it’s usually to go to the more coastal areas, so it was nice to explore the interior of the island and some of its towns. It’s also great that you can get to each of these pizza places on public transportation, so if you’re looking to try New York pizza outside of the city, you can make a day of it visiting any one of these spots.
French Bread Pizza
We recently came across this recipe in the New York Times, and it was like a trip down memory lane for us – because in the 90s, when we were kids, French bread pizza was all the rage. It was the feta pasta of that era, but since the new millennium dawned this version of pizza has very much fallen by the wayside. We decided to indulge on this nostalgia trip, however, because this recipe is vegetarian and an easy and tasty meal to whip up on a weekday night. And we also got to do some research on French bread pizza, which we’ll share with you: it was invented by a late-night food truck on the Cornell University campus as something for drunk college students to chow down on, and then it spread across the country as an alternative to regular round pizzas. This version here is slightly elevated, using pesto instead of regular tomato sauce and adding in some fresh mozzarella slices, so it’s a little different than what you might remember getting out of a Stouffer’s box, but it still hits all those notes of a quick and tasty take on pizza.
To make this, you’ll need:
- 2 bunches of Italian parsley
- Garlic
- Pine nuts
- Olive oil
- Parmesan cheese
- A loaf of French bread
- An 8-ounce ball of fresh mozzarella
- Red pepper flakes
- Dried oregano
First you can make the pesto: pluck all the leaves off both bunches of parsley and throw them in a food processor along with 3 garlic cloves and 1/4 cup of pine nuts. Blend everything together until the parsley is well chopped, then add in 1/3 cup of olive oil and blend again. Use a spatula to scrape down whatever comes up the sides of the bowl and blend in 1/4 cup of Parmesan, plus a large pinch of salt, plus any extra olive oil you might need (added one tablespoon at a time) to make for a smooth pesto.
Next, measure out 1/4 cup of olive oil into a small pan and grate in 4 garlic cloves. Cook over medium heat for 3 minutes until the oil sputters, but the garlic shouldn’t start browning.
Now cut your French bread in half lengthwise, then slice each half down the middle so you have four open-faced pieces. Brush with the garlic olive oil, then place the bread on a baking sheet and cook at 450°F for 5 minutes. When it comes out of the oven, spread the pesto on top of each piece of bread. Cut your mozzarella into 16 slices and place 4 slices on top of each section of bread.
Cook again for another 5 minutes, until the cheese has started to melt, then broil on low for 2 more minutes to finish cooking your French bread pizza. Let it cool for 5 minutes after it comes out of the oven, then sprinkle some red pepper flakes and dried oregano on top and drizzle on some extra olive oil, and your pizza is ready to eat!
OK, so our French bread pizza got maybe a little too toasty in the broiler, so you have to keep a careful eye on it at the end. But we loved these little pizzas because they were a simple and fun take on a classic. There’s no mixing and shaping of dough that needs to be done, since you’ve got the bread already made and serving as the base here. Using a pesto made from parsley, not the traditional basil, makes for an interesting sauce to pair with the fresh mozzarella, plus your French bread becomes nice and garlic-y to add in some great flavor. This was a nice treat for dinner during the week and we encourage you to try these out – and even, if you feel like it, give them your own spin with any combination of sauce and cheese.
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.