Native New Yorker here. Out of towners are obsessed with the BEST slice, but the true measure of NYC's 45 degree greatness is the decent quality following a Poisson distribution. My tip: just travel to any random spot in the five boroughs. First; you will be impressed how close you are to a pizza spot wherever you are. Second: you will be impressed with the slice, and with the variety of people who are good at making it.
I 100% agree, and I've only visited NYC a couple times.
Each time I visit, I try to eat at least one slice of pizza and one bagel every day. The thing that blows me away is how generally good they are, no matter where I buy them. Of course I'll look at reviews, but I won't walk more than 5 blocks to get a slice. Never been disappointed.
Same thing visiting Paris - you can hunt for the BEST croissant, but the remarkable thing is that nearly everywhere you shop, you'll find a really, really good one. I live near Arsicault in SF, and though they might make the BEST croissant in the US (and I will probably live a shorter life due to the number of them I put in my body every week), I'd trade that for a really good croissant on every corner.
I think it reflects having shared cultural values around the food and a knowledge in the community of what makes the food great both in terms of inputs and outputs, and I hope we never stop valuing good pizza!!
One thing I've heard said about French food generally in the past is that there's an entire supply chain in France around French food in particular so you really tend not to get bad French staples at very many places--even if it's a random touristy place.
You can rinse and repeat in many places for various items. For example, when I was last in Germany, you'd get good sandwiches with good bread at any random train station in a system of any size. Try that in the US.
> so you really tend not to get bad French staples at very many places--even if it's a random touristy place.
French here! I'm usually not that picky with croissants, but much more with other patisseries, such as eclairs. It's a bit harder to find good patisseries, and the quality doesn't always correlate with the price. Even in what looks like legit "patisseries artisanales", you can find eclairs which are basically frozen industrial stuff and sell for 3.50+ euros, which I think is a scam.
That being said, yes, I think you can normally find decent bread, croissants and patisseries (and cheese) pretty much everywhere in France.
On a side note, I lived in London and I noticed that Sainsbury made good bread and croissants, for much cheaper than the fancy "French" bakeries.
Maybe I'm wrong but I had the impression that in France pastry shops had legit pastry chefs who had to go through apprenticeships whereas in America for example, pastry shops give a baker a recipe to follow and that's pretty much it (for the ones that bake in-house I mean)
It varies. Your neighborhood bakery/pastry shop may have a baker that learned from their parent(s). Or it could be a higher-end shop with a trained patisserie chef. Or it could be a 'front' bakery that receives their daily shipment from a regional factory that makes them by hand or by machine.
> France pastry shops had legit pastry chefs who had to go through apprenticeships
It depends. Nowadays it's not always the case. To reduce costs, apparently quite a lot of shops sell industrial pastries. For bread, there's a label apparent on the shop that certifies whether the bread is made in house ("artisan boulanger"), but it's not true for pastries. It's hard to say exactly what is made in-house without asking.
For simpler items like croissants, IMO the recipe and following directions is all that matters.
I've made a decent amount of semi complex desserts from recipe authors I trust and they turned out great.
Sure, there are some minor physical skills you learn and knowledge you gain, but for baking I find that as long as you follow good recipes precisely you can get great results.
This does fall apart when you start talking about decorating desserts as that is definitely more art/skill than science.
In the 80s some bright spark realised that the smell of baking bread makes people hungry and buy more food, so now most large-enough UK supermarkets bake in-store.
Not to mention they have typically been making the regional food for centuries, if not millennia. The selection can be more limited in the EU, but the quality is incredible, and at a very low price point compared to US.
You can get cheese and wine made in the US ~ as good as French, but it’s 5x as expensive.
I don’t know about the cheese but I disagree with you about the wine. For example Californian wine is excellent, and you get a much higher quality for the money than with French wine for anything below $150. French wine is in much higher demand so all the lowest quality is sold too, instead of being made vinegar or discarded, becoming the entry level. French wine is subjected to strict rules that don’t allow them correct them like the Californian do, like adding a bit of water here or there… etc. In places where you have to import both the quality difference for the money is evident, within the us is abysmal
California wine can be excellent but is overpriced, and I am a native Californian raised on California wine. French wine has impressively consistent quality at low price points. You can’t easily buy good cheap French wine in California I’ve discovered, but you can in other parts of the country. There are certain types of wine that California does better, but France does much better for the price generally. This was not the case a few decades ago, but global competition crushed the price of French wine and opened the global wine trade. France has so many regions that produce excellent wine without the brand premium of Bordeaux, Burgundy, et al.
Because I no longer live in California, there is excellent distribution of French wine where I live. Now I can buy myriad discerning $15 bottles of French wine that frankly are much better than what you can typically buy from California for the same price point in the US. California wines are overpriced for the quality. I’d prefer that were not the case but that’s the reality in my experience.
At any price point, French wine is lower risk than California wine. Their reputation for wine is deserved.
You need to sample the price/quality in France, not on goods exported elsewhere - that’s the key point of this observation. French products are often expensive abroad, but dirt-cheap locally.
The top-quartile 5-10 EUR bottle of wine at the hypermarche is way better than anything in the <$20 price range made in the US. A $15 lump of cheese would be a few EUR in France at quality-parity.
Just want to say you took the words out of my mouth on this one. I was given the exact same advice re: Parisian croissants, and I feel exactly the same way about Arsicault in SF. I’d I’ve never had a better one in the US, let alone SF.
Note to others: Arsicault is worth the visit if you’re in SF! Also don’t be a sucker and wait in line for an hour on a Saturday morning. Just go at like 11am on a Tuesday and walk right in.
I've spent a lot of time in Paris and NYC but have found it very hard to find a randomly good croissant; less so a randomly good slice. I've tried many of the foodie favorites for both and been largely unimpressed. There have a few truly excellent. Maybe they ruined me for others.
Finding a decent croissant is fairly easy in Paris, but if you've ever tasted an actually good croissant, buttery but not sickening, airy but not empty, crispy but not dry, you know how incredibly difficult to find those are.
Not Boston’s but I’ve had a ton of “you have to try this one bagel shop in town, it’s just like New York!”
Generally speaking they’ve been decent enough bagels, but the shops don’t have the turnover to be able to ask “what’s hot?” and get a reasonable answer.
Also, the appetizing game tends to be pretty weak. Occasionally a shop will fly in Acme, which is admittedly impressive, but it tends to only be nova. I’m hard pressed to find herring in cream sauce, whitefish salad, or belly lox outside of the tristate area.
It's basically a Jewish deli which I'm happy to see is apparently open for dinner again. (Closed for dinner pre-COVID.) Yes, very good in Kendall in Cambridge though they also apparently have a couple of other locations now.
There are a number of foods that are supposedly only being amazing within a certain geographic location, but the best ones I've had were far outside if that location.
The best shrimp poboy I had was in Tampa; nothing I could find in New Orleans even came close. There was a New York style pizza place in Shanghai which people that went back to America would talk about missing (better than any pizza I've had in NYC). An Italian person I knew visited D.C. and when they got back to Rome they kept talking about how much they missed the pizza place in Washington.
For bagels, best I've ever had is probably a split between New Jersey (not _far_ from NYC) and Montreal.
Best pizza I’ve ever had. Franks in New Haven is close, but just not that crazy about thin crust.
(Ironically, some of the worst “real” pizza I’ve had was at the Atlanta restaurant owned by someone whose “How to make real pizza” page gets posted here every year or two. Yea, it had a nice char but everything about it was just bland bland bland)
> There was a New York style pizza place in Shanghai which people that went back to America would talk about missing (better than any pizza I've had in NYC).
I really like croissants but haven't ever been to Paris. My last trip abroad was to Portugal and it was crazy how some sandwich shop at the train station had croissants that tasted better than any specialty bakeshop I've ever been to in the US.
It's not about quality when they're reducing sauce to save money, as stated in the article. The slices may still be better than in any other state, but the focus has shifted from quality to price.
Doppio Zero on Hayes by Davis Symphony was quite good, although a bit fancier. Amici's East Coast Pizzeria on Lombard in Marina was also very tasty. Also, it's not as fun, but Mountain Mikes is also great, inexpensive pizza, like in your Papa Johns range but better overall.
Like out-of-towners asking which cheese steak shop in Philly is the best. The best is whichever corner shop is closest to you. If you're local and eat cheese steaks often, you don't drive all the way across the city to get such a lunch. You walk one or two blocks whichever shop you're near. But visitors want to experience the best, not experience it as a local would.
Random cheesesteaks in Philly are far better than random cheesesteaks in any other city, but I would never recommend a tourist to go to a random spot over one of the highly rated places. You'll just feel it was good but over hyped. It's a waste of time for someone who is there temporarily and doesn't live in the city.
If you go to a place like Joe's you'll understand why the food became famous in the first place and how much better cheesesteaks are in Philly.
I was in Philly a few years ago for a day trip and tried two different cheesesteaks. Both were fine, but they're not places I would ever seek out again.
I've definitely had better delicious hot steak sandwiches with cheese and toppings in other places. Maybe I was expecting something different, or maybe you've got a point?
Guess I'll have to get to Joe's if I am in Philly again!
Honestly, Joe's is just a random place. If you're near there don't even bother with cheesesteaks. There's so many great places to eat along that corridor, whether you want a sandwich (like at Costinello's or Liberty Kitchen), Falafel at Goldie's, something fancier/more substantial at Elwood, Suraya, Middle Child, Cheu, etc. Or just want to eat at a bar, there's JB's, Kraftwerk and more, with great new places popping up all the time. This is true in most neighborhoods.
The steak shops on South Street (Jim's when it reopens and Ishkibibble's) are probably the best places to eat in a touristy area where there's nothing else better around. Campo's or Sonny's in Olde City are good too if you can't get a table at a real restaurant or just want something quick.
so many great places in this post. i'd also add angelo's. that's been my favorite steak since moving to the city (but also want to try d'alessandros, have heard good things)
To be honest I've never found cheesesteaks to be exceptional, the best of them are just pretty good, cheap, convenient and satisfying. I tell people that if they want a really good sandwich in Philly, they should go to DiNic's for one of his pulled or roast pork sandwiches. It's in Reading Terminal Market, which is a pretty nice place to take visitors anyway.
I guess we have opposite opinions, as I'm convinced the glowing recommendations for the pork rabe sandwiches are mostly manufactured by people with blogs, vlogs, and listicles to make who weren't getting any return writing yet another story about cheesesteaks. The good cheesesteak places don't really change much.
I went to college in Philly and not once did anybody ever suggest we go get one. When I was visiting a few years I was the one who told my friends about the sandwich. They'd grown up in Philly and never heard a mention of it. We made a whole trip of it.
It's a unique sandwich and not bad, but everyone felt we should have made a trip of going to get our favorite cheesesteak instead.
Out-of-towners are obsessed with the BEST, most obscure everything. It's one of the things I liked least about living in the city. Everything always felt like a competition about who knew the coolest places.
It's comical that someone would travel more than a few minutes within NYC just to try a slice of pizza. Like if it's a nice neapolitan pie, sure. But just for a standard NYC-style slice? That's a waste of time. All the places that typically top people's list, like Joe's Pizza, Prince St. Pizza, Bleecker St., etc., are all very mid. You can get an equally good slice as those big names in almost any neighborhood.
I travel well outside my neighborhood for standard slices regularly and I've never felt it's a waste of time.
But maybe an out-of-towner feeling they need to find the perfect slice is a different perspective than mine as a local. I know what I want out of the places I seek out and I'm comfortable with whatever extra time investment that requires.
I disagree. Here in Prospect Heights the pizza is a solid notch below than Prince St or Bleecker St and I think it is worth making a pit stop to get a slice at those places. Restaurants like L’Industrie are worth a whole trip on their own to visit.
Frankly because in many (not all) places (and especially true the further back you go) -- there's very few good ... anything. When I first moved to Austin TX in 99 I remember being really puzzled by how bad all the food was. Like nearly everything was mediocre. Very slowly better places popped up and everyone talked about them. The one exception was BBQ, and to that end yes -- the "best" was Franklins but frankly it was nearly all very good.
But overtime, other good stuff started to pop up, and eventually there were enough good places that "the best" became less interesting. Still, Austin is far away from NYC, and of the few times I visited Europe (Italy specifically) nearly everywhere in the US is a bit behind. IMHO that's largely b/c of how new everything is. Overtime as areas become more established, things get passed down and around, the quality of everything goes up. And in some places, there's so much good stuff that yeah it makes no sense to talk about best anymore. But for many places the difference between the best and the rest is the decision point of "is it worth going at all?".
When I came into this thread I immediately did a search for Prince knowing there would be a comment about it here.
I do like their slices but I am not leaving mid-town for that. I perfectly enjoy Upside Pizza slices.
Prince st pizza is a joke, it's literally just a pepperoni gimmick and any serious NY'er isn't putting up with that crap, let alone waiting on a stupidly long line to eat it.
I tried it because I worked around there and it was before it went viral. There's no need to travel across the city to try a "slice". When I'm in a neighborhood that has a good spot, I'll stop through. There's nothing about Prince st that requires it being tried unless you want to participate in the trend. It's just a basic pizza place that went viral because they put a stupid amount of cupping pepperoni on their slices. It's really got nothing to do with what I'd call my conception or experience of pizza as a lifelong New Yorker.
That's because most of us have good pizza joints back home too, and we want to find out whether NY's famous pizza outdoes the places we know and like. We're usually only visiting for a short time and can't try six different pizza places unless we're going to eat nothing but pizza on our trip. And the best place often isn't the famous place. So it's worth it to us to put in the effort to search, while a local might not care as much where they get their pizza.
I have to strongly disagree. It is kind of fun and amazing how many pizza places there are around every corner. The problem is, most of them are sub par. In fact, I feel bad for people visiting who just walk into a random slice place because odds are it won't be very good. The great thing about NY pizza is that it very good and very plentiful. But the crappy slice joints are even more plentiful.
I agree. There are so many crappy pizza places in NY, especially in Manhattan. It’s a risk trying some random place. NJ has better and more consistent pizza and bagels. That said, I don’t even try to get pizza elsewhere, I’ve had some really extra gross greasy pizza in other states. For some reason, I’ve never been to a mountain town that can get it right.
Agree. I grew up in NJ and lived a few years in NYC. NYC has a lot of variation in what is called NY style pizza. A lot of it is bad. In NJ, the NY style pizza is a lot more consistent and overall better than NYC. Living in NYC I was always puzzled how there could exist such bad pizza there. Mostly I’m talking about Manhattan. Maybe it’s bad to me and not others, and has to do with NYC having so many residents that grew up elsewhere, bringing their own varied tastes in pizza?
> Living in NYC I was always puzzled how there could exist such bad pizza there.
Living in Barcelona I think this is pretty clear: Tourists. Though what's pizza in NYC is paella and tapas here of course.
Their reasoning is simple. Most tourists don't ever come back so why bother investing in a quality product when you can just milk them for what they're worth. Even reviews don't help with this very much.
As a local it's easy to avoid these places. Avoiding the ones with pictures of the food and sticky promoters outside trying to get you in the door does most of it. And realizing that most of the best places don't have the shiniest venues precisely because they don't need to. The locals know where to find them anyway.
I’m so relieved to see others recognizing this and it’s not just me.
My theory is NYC had better average pizza in the past but people move out of the city over time. They probably move to lower cost areas. Many pizza makers in NJ are originally from NYC. The pizza is better in NJ on average.
Average New York pizza quality is highly over rated. If you go to any random spot you are likely to get bad pizza. I think this has changed over time. Often there is better pizza in New Jersey.
This is not a joke. I strongly disagree with advising people to try random NYC pizza places. My theory is a lot of the good pizza makers moved out of the city to the suburbs or lower cost cities.
I agree wholeheartedly. Thanks for having the courage to state this.
I think the reasons are straightforward: 1: The supply chain has evolved. Affordable ingredients are mass produced and low quality and a pizza place needs a strong motive to choose better ingredients. 2: family pride has not passed to current generations. And as you say most of those families have migrated out to the suburbs.
To be fair, I still think the bar is much lower outside the NY area. So visitors may legitimately love places we cringe at. And more power to them, frankly.
I think the decline extends to the suburbs too. Would love to get some of your New Jersey recs.
Similarly, you could do the same thing on the other end of the state in Buffalo, NY. Hard to find a truly disappointing slice. What you will find, however, is a variety in "style" of pizza. They all live somewhere in the neighborhood of 80/20 NY/Chicago style. Easy to find a nice thin slice, but plenty of thicker doughier options. Never so far as a full deep-dish.
That's what I used to tell people about San Francisco when I lived there twenty years ago -- the high end restaurants are great, but what's more impressive is that the average neighborhood eatery is more often than not really amazing, too.
> the high end restaurants are great, but what's more impressive is that the average neighborhood eatery is more often than not really amazing, too.
Absolutely! I share the same.
Part of that is the fine dining though. Fine dining is its own culture, and just like other Bay Area industries, once you get some good chefs in the city, they'll train people who open their own restaurants. Then the quality expectations go up among residents... and everything ends up better, even "down market".
This is absolute Seraghina slander. Maybe it's not Ops quality, but definitely better than Barboncino and one of the greats in the Roberta's-style lineage.
One good place in a whole neighborhood doesn’t change this! New York is plagued with bad pizza in the outer residential areas. The median pizza place in Bed-Stuy is not good.
Seraghina is great, the sourdough crust is sooo good. I like Speedy Romeo a lot too but I think it’s on the wrong side of Classon to officially be Bed-Stuy.
Billy Joel sings about walking through Bed Stuy alone as akin riding his motorcycle in the rain. Taking his life in his hands. It still amazes me that well off people live there now.
There's a lot of bad pizza in NYC, as well. Really depends on the establishment and customer expectations.
If someone is planning to visit there with the belief that they can throw a stone and immediately hit a great pizza place, they'll probably be disappointed.
There are also bad Italian restaurants, bagel places, coffee shops, Chinese food, etc.
It bothers me that someone would say they are all good. There is no need to hype up NYC. You can get very high quality food, but not just by randomly going into a place.
This seems to be a pattern across regions, across foods! I have said the same of Hyderabad and Biryani. But none the less, when someone asks for a recommendation, I give a 70th or 80th percentile near their stay. Better than them randomly walking to a 20th percentile place because it was well lit.
I've been to NYC once as a kid but I don't think we ever got pizza. I've had "NYC Style" elsewhere but it's always whatever. I had some business way out in Long Island and on the way back to JFK, I wanted to stop and finally grab one slice of some real NY pizza. Weirdly there were no good pizza places near where I was working so I had missed out until the drive back to the airport. I stopped at New Park Pizza, waited in line, ordered at the window, and ate the best damn pizza I've ever had. It was hot as hell but everything about it was perfect. Up until today, I actually couldn't remember what the place was called but could remember it was next to a CVS and near JFK. I found it on Maps and was pretty happy to see it listed on the list in the link.
This is how I feel about bagels in NYC, but with pizza, and particularly slice shops (as opposed to restaurant style pizza) I do think the best slices in NYC are in a different class from any other American city
True with traveling generally. The best Thai food I had wasn't at the "best Thai food" place in Bangkok, it was on a streetcorner. The best kebab I've had in Berlin wasn't at Ruya's, it's my local guy.
For pizza this seems to have a halo effect as well. It you drop into a non-franchise pizzeria anywhere within roughly 50 miles of NYC then chances are you’ll have a pretty good NYC-style slice, and a reasonable chance of a slice that can stand next to most slices in NYC and still be proud of itself (if a bit awestruck by the company it finds itself in).
I’ve seen a bit of this in areas of the country that have seen some emigration from NYC outwards: NC, FL. Maybe less so as you go west, unless some here have encountered them?
They're not hunting for the "best slice" because they want the best slice -- they just want a story to tell. Most people can't tell the difference between good and ok food.
It's because the BEST Pizza in NYC is probably on par with some of the best pizza in other cities. Great chefs can make great Pizza. They can do this wherever they are.
What makes a town renowned for a type of food is the MEDIAN quality.
Vancouver has more Sushi restaurants than Starbucks and bad ones don't last. You are always within a 15 minute walk to a better sushi restaurant than 90% of cities outside of Japan.
I have found it to be the opposite. If I walk into whatever random pizza shop happens to be nearby I’m always taken aback out how often it’s … ok.
There’s a lot of good pizza to be found but even more if it is just ok. Mind you I mean ok in the literal sense, and don’t mean it’s bad. But a lot of people make it seem like every street corner has amazing pizza. But that’s just not true
I would not make such a claim. Outside of lunchtime it's hard to find a shop with a decent slice that hasn't been sitting for too long. Even then, lots are mediocre some, if not all of the time. You will find yourself constantly browsing the case for the least crappy pizza because the one you really want isn't going to be good.
Agree, one thing though is some places you want the fresh slice out of the oven, other places you want the reheated slice (as they undercook the pizza with the expectation that it will be reheated later, and may even have to specify you want it “well done”)
> Native New Yorker here. Out of towners are obsessed with the BEST slice
I visited New York and ate at a pizza place† that advertised, if I recall correctly, their second-best rating according to someone who had made it their mission to sample and rate every pizza place in New York. (It couldn't have been this guy, since he says he started in 2014.)
The pizza was subpar. Why would I be interested in what someone in New York thinks makes a good pizza? I want pizza that I like, not pizza that some random guy from a different pizza culture likes.
† Not for the rating; I ate there because it was next to my hotel.
Ray's Pizza on St Mark's Place consistently rates in the top 3 of many B&T food bloggers rating New York Pizza. It also has some of the worst pizza I've ever eaten in my entire life and a tremendous rat problem.
Those ratings are bunk.
Sacco Pizza on 9th Avenue & 55th St is an underrated gem and a family business since 1972.
I’d love to see which reviewer rates Ray’s pizza that high in recent years. I thought it was just famous for being on Saint Marks and appealing to drunks
I would love to find "food safe heritage bagels" anywhere in the world, which would not be comfortable to the average modern palate today, so I've read.
These would be turn of the 20th century New York Jewish style bagels, made back then by bagel unions entirely by hand because the dough was too stiff for common kneading machines at that time (not quite sure how that squares with the giant industrial machines of the day, maybe the missing detail is the common bakery kneading machines were not up to the task though a hyper-expensive custom machine could be commissioned). These were so infamously toughly chewy they were hyperbolically touted as teeth breaking and taking an indecent amount of time to digest. "Food safe" because bagel bakery conditions at the turn of the 20th century are unacceptable these days.
Or maybe I've been bamboozled by food editors hunting for clicks.
Not a New Yorker but been there many times. My impression of NYC lizzy is that like anywhere you might find a surprise gem but for rhe most part NYC Pizza falls somewhere between school lunchroom and mall pizza.
If you want to brag about anything you have a much better case with bagels.
