PicoBlog

Welcome to Lillian Pizzeria on the corner of 69th Avenue and Harrow Street in Forest Hills, Queens. This is the home of the best pizza in New York City.

The inside of this place is as small as it looks. But the slices are huge. The amount of cheese weighs down the slice, requiring the dough to be sturdy and thick to effectively hold up the toppings. It’s pretty greasy too. Like, drippy and orange. But you clean it up with a napkin and the flavor stays behind! Also, the place has something called “broccoli pinwheels” which I was obsessed with as a child. They’re flaky, crispy pastry dough that wraps a core of cheesy broccoli in the shape of a pinwheel. That, a slice of pizza, (you only need one) and a coke is a perfect meal.

Why is it the best pizza in New York City? I guess it’s because they make it the exact way I like it. Truth be told, I haven’t been back there in years. But it’s still what I say when people ask.

Is there such a thing as “the best pizza?” Everyone in New York seems to have a take. New York is known far and wide for its pizza, and it seems like a rite of passage (from just a person to a Real New Yorker™) when you have been to enough pizza places for you to say which is “the best one.”

As someone born and raised here, I understand wanting to have an opinion on this topic to prove my constitution as a local. But locals in this city do not always agree. Once, my freshman year RA at Columbia took some of our dorm residents to Patsy’s, a famous pizza joint and his favorite place in the city. John was also from the city, around where the Q train ends on the Upper East Side, so I was interested in what sort of pizza he loved so much.

Only me and I think two other people went, and the walk was a freezing-cold 25 minutes across Harlem. While we shielded ourselves from the wind, John sung the praises of Patsy’s, seemingly undeterred from the weather. When we finally got the pies, the slices were small, floppy, and paper-thin. Not salty, but saucy. As we ate them, I thought, “John doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.” I felt bad for him, and that he had such shit taste in pizza.

As wrong as he was, we all know there’s more at play to pizza than the food. As we ate, John talked about how he used to come to Patsy’s on special occassions, and how he had been going there since he was a little kid. And I feel that way about Lillian’s, too.

Lillian Pizzeria (fondly called “Lillian’s” by Forest Hills locals), was run by a friendly Italian immigrant couple, and it was named for the owner and chef’s wife, Lillian. Their daughter worked at the elementary school down the block, where me and all my neighborhood friends went to school every day until sixth grade. After school, we’d stop at Lillian’s for pizza, and gleefully eat to celebrate the end of a hard day of being a kid. Lillian’s sponsored a local kids soccer team, and proudly hung their team photos in the dining area. It’s not just the pizza, it’s the place.

Although I know it plays a big part in the recipe, I still have doubts that nostalgia is the only ingredient in good pizza. Let us consider the evidence.

I’ve noticed that every city has some sort of claim towards “the best pizza.” Hell, every individual pizza place claims this, including each of the over 100 Famiglias locations across the northeast. What other type of food establishment does that on this scale? There’s NY pizza, obviously, but there’s also Chicago pizza, Baltimore pizza, San Francisco pizza, St. Louis pizza, Hawaiian pizza, there’s even a guy who cooks pizza using an active volcano in Guatemala. While visiting Argentina, I developed a passionate affair with Argentinian-style pizza (if you haven’t had it GO GO GO!! It’s in Queens!!). Once, on a remote island north of Colombia, we got served pizza at their only restaurant. I’ve never been to Italy, but I imagine they have their own pizza there as well.

How can all of these places have “the best pizza?” Why do I hate Chicago deep-dish style “pizza”? I normally love overwhelming saucy nonsense! I can only conclude that it’s loyalty to the place, and not the actual taste.

On the other hand, different pizzas can and do fail on an objective test of quality all the time. Floppy pizza, poor ingredients, and undercooked dough all exist. (Of course I’m referencing all the sins of Amy’s Baking Company from Kitchen Nightmares.) But even pizza that’s bad is still pretty good. You can’t really have such a catastrophic slice of pizza that runs through your gut like bad sushi or an old burrito. Pizza, in my opinion, is always gonna be pretty good. Even crappy 99 cent pizza— doesn’t it hit? Once I got a $36 pizza pie at John’s Pizza on Bleecker, and let me tell you- it fucking sucked. I was WISHING for dollar pizza after that shit. But I was hungry, so I still had two slices, and considered a third.

I’ve been sort of jaded about pizza. I feel like I don’t even know if pizza is even good anymore unless you’re eating it after softball practice or an emotionally fulfilling night out with your galpals. Could there be a way to taste-test pizza without the time or place influencing your opinion? Could me and pizza just start over?

This is what brought me to Staten Island.

I heard from a co-worker that Denino’s Pizza in Staten Island is the best pizza in New York. This intrigued me because I don’t think I actually have an opinion on Staten Island. Staten Island is in New York, but probably the place New Yorkers (who don’t live there) visit the least. It’s technically a part of my home city so I have no reason to shit on it (can’t say the same for Boston, LA, or any other city’s hack pizza), but it’s not anywhere I’m familiar with enough to cloud my judgment in a positive way either.

Anyway, this coworker was from Staten Island, and told me about how Denino’s sits right next to a local Italian ice place, and on a summer day Denino’s would be full of families enjoying a meal and walking around with flavored ices. This coworker was so adamant this pizza was the best that they (only half-jokingly) requested it be ordered for our office party in Chelsea. They said Staten Island pizza is something unto its own, distinct from “New York” style pizza. I cross-referenced this with a few of my friends from Staten Island, and they all quickly agreed with an important addendum:

As it turns out, Staten Islanders have the same problem we all have with pizza and nostalgia. But I asked a few follow-up questions, and ended up with a nice list of quality pizza places recommended by Staten Island locals with the same mission as me: to get a real New York slice.

Did you know you can go to four pizzerias in one day? No one will stop you.

The ones I chose were Denino’s, Joe & Pat’s, Lee’s Tavern, and Pizzeria Giove.

The first thing I learned from this day was that Staten Island does have its own way of doing pizza. All the pizzas had a very thin crunchy crust, with fresh tomato sauce not necessarily under the cheese, but combined with it. You’ll see the tiny variations on this general rule above, Lee’s Tavern leads the pack with fully unearthed sauce, and Joe & Pat’s takes the term “thin crust” to an extreme.

Each pizza place also had a distinct vibe, but with some striking similarities.

Denino’s, Joe & Pat’s, and Lee’s Tavern all started with a casual eatery at the front, and a full restaurant in the back. At Denino’s and Lee’s you have to walk through a dark bar to get to the sit-down restaurant, and Joe and Pat’s looked like a dollar slice place with a door in the back that leads you into a classy Italian vineyard-themed eatery. All were really cozy and relatively unassuming. They even shot some of Martin Scorsese’s joint, The Irishman, by Lee’s Tavern. All of them hung various plaques that certified their pizza was ranked “best” by one publishing outlet or another.

Another important similarity is that all the pizza places hung some sort of historical paraphernalia in their establishments, to give one a sense of where they were in the world. Denino’s had huge photos provided by the Staten Island Advance on the history of the island and its summer attractions (including Denino’s) all over its walls with captions and timelines. Pizzeria Giove was filled with pictures of prominent Italian entertainers and cultural icons. Lee’s Tavern had a New York street sign on its walls, along with pictures of local sports teams. Joe & Pat’s main decor was lots of local newspaper clippings featuring its positive reviews. This sort of self-referential, highly specific ambiance feels like a pattern amongst all pizzerias? Never do I see more documentation decorating a resturant than at a pizzeria.

Eating that much pizza in one day changes you. I had to pace myself very carefully to continue our mission safely. Despite the challenges, I can confidently say that each slice of pizza I had that day was absolutely delicious.

Denino’s pizza was most similar to a typical New York slice. They were thickest slices we had, and those slices were still pretty thin. But they baked the anchovies into the slices and it was *chef’s kiss*. Joe & Pat’s was ultra-thin, but still tasty and light! Lee’s Tavern was incredibly fresh and tasty for bar pizza, and so crunchy and crisp. Pizzeria Giove was was our last stop of the day and we didn’t know if we had another slice in us, but as soon as we tried it… it was like we hadn’t eaten all day.

I was honestly surprised how all of this delicious and refreshingly unique pizza was a ferry ride away. And I was also surprised that Staten Island-style pizza is a real thing. It’s not actually that far off from New York-style pizza compared to other styles, after all, Staten Island is in New York. But that’s where the fun is- the little things.

It may be that there are infinitesimally small culinary differences between each individual pizza place in Staten Island. But together, all the pizza places build the DNA of the organism that is Staten Island pizza, which is conclusively distinct from all other pizza in the world.

In the taxonomy of pizza, when is something actually different enough to call it a new species? Speciation can get a bit niche- drawing the line between the spotted ladybeetle and the greater ladybeetle feels way less important than the line between a goldfish and a bear. But the more we look, the more our pattern-seeking brains can’t help but follow a nagging compulsion to group our surroundings into smaller and smaller boxes. I think making these tiny distinctions is a part of who we are.

In pizza terms, what I’m saying is each location is like a fingerprint, an individual in a herd of wild pizza shops. And in each city, you’ll notice that they’ve begun to branch out from one another in size, shape, and flavor, and around each style of pizza cultural altars have been built. Pizza shops are everywhere. And because they’re everywhere, what makes them special can come down to a matter of a few city blocks. Things like local sports, high school graduations, and important Italians in our lives have an impact on our surroundings as we flock to cheap, tasty food.

Pizza is a constant in American life, much like many other beloved foods, places, and people. And that gives one room to really make it their own in some infinitesimally small way.

So in order to answer the question “what is the BEST pizza?” I would respond with: Does it really matter?

Yes. It’s Pizzeria Giove.

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