New York's reputation for great pizza—and the cheap price of a slice—inevitably breeds a city full of "experts" who wouldn't think twice about declaring which joint makes the best version. It can be even maddening to listen to friends and colleagues weigh in with de facto credibility just for having a New York zip code. And the rankings! They can make you even crazier. So let's forget about ranking Platonic pies. The lists most useful to pizza passionistas can sometimes be the ones that highlight places that aren't world-famous. Allow your blood pressure to fall as we talk about most underrated pizza instead.
All over the boroughs there are great mom-and-pops carrying on decades of tradition, pizzerias whose time in the limelight isn't in print, online, on TV, or in the movies. But in the eyes of devoted New Yorkers who've been supporting them for years, they're stars nonetheless. Sure, a few are in Manhattan, but we're more often talking about gems in Queens and the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island, some that are off highways, aren't near subways, or that require a fair amount of dedication to visit. The common thread? They're all worth it.
Some of the following joints may be pizza famous (known to pizza nerds). Some are not without acclaim or notoriety. You may have even been to a few. For our purposes, we’re calling pizzerias "underrated" that consistently do fantastic pizza but whose names don’t roll off the tongue of the average New Yorker as fast as they’d retreat from a scalding slice. New Park, Brothers, Rose & Joe's, Arturo's—there are plenty of spots that are criminally underrated, but for now, consider these 10 places deserving of immediate-recall status.
Here is New York's most underrated pizza.