The Pizza Guys And Other Long Islanders
An essay on the vital pizzerias of Nassau and Suffolk, along with thoughts on Trump, fears of crime in the city, fears of mass deportations, and where to get a great slice
Enjoy this essay about dining out on my native Long Island. Scroll to the bottom for a list of the region’s best pizza, and consider subscribing to support this small publication
Not Quite Like New York City Slice Shops…
I needed a little boost after the election.
So before the Ravens-Bengals kickoff last week, I ordered this: two Neapolitan slices, fried calamari with a bucket of spicy red sauce, and Buffalo wings — twelve of them, each one glowing orange like neon. All from an Oyster Bay pizzeria.
It was actually a pretty light haul. On other evenings, the fam and I will add on a thirteen-inch sausage roll (that we’ll eat promptly) and a small Greek salad (that we’ll leave in the fridge and forget about).
Long Island pizza parlors are not like New York City slice shops.
They’re places for good pizza. But they’re also full-scale restaurants with illogically long and irrational menus. They sell fusilli primavera, penne alla vodka, fried shrimp under a cheesy cloak of marsala sauce, chicken Caesar wraps with optional mozzarella (really?), fettuccine with salmon sauce (there are no rules!), the worst spaghetti you’ll ever taste, veal piccata, veal marsala, good beer, average wine, and Italian heroes by the foot for when your 47-year-old uncle retires from the Suffolk County police force.
No calzones left? No problem, some guy in the back will make you one, gimme 20 minutes.
Do you like those super light slices they sell in the West Village? You know, where a trained baker performs plastic surgery on your pie with a squeeze bottle and fresh basil? That’s not what you’ll find on Long Island. Here, slices are heftier. I’ve never seen EVOO touch a slice on the North Shore. Or the South Shore.
Our pizza dress code is no shirt, no shoes, no service, but you’ll probably be good anyway, just leave your Red Sox hat at home.
Our pizza payment policy is that credit cards are cool but cash is king; more bills change hands here than at your local cocaine wholesaler. Every now and then, regulars might get an extra slice for free — call it the Long Island version of a bar buyback — so tip accordingly, but in cash.
Long Island pizza parlors will rarely ask for 20 percent on a Square screen.
A good rule of thumb is to always respect the Pizza Guys.
The Pizza Guys are the guys working behind the counter. They are, with few exceptions, guys. Young and old. Italian-speaking and Spanish-speaking. Jesus Christ how many guys are working tonight? I sh!t you not this must be the only class of restaurant charging less than $700 per person where there are more staffers behind the counter than customers. Honestly, how the f&ck do these places stay in business? Probably because the calamari is $23 and few prices are listed anywhere.
If you drop by often enough, one of the guys will strike up a conversation. You know, basic stuff. How are the parents? Watching the big game? Whenever I go in I make sure I have something to say, because “I was blogging all day” isn’t going to cut it.
Not too long ago, a Pizza Guy asked me if I believed in God. Not a typical Pizza Guy question, but his wife, bless her, was recovering from a serious illness, and she seems to be doing better. When he learned I got laid off, he started giving me little discounts here and there.
Just this week, another Pizza Guy taking my order was beaming about the Trump victory. I knew he’d be happy; he’d been talking about the campaign for a while. He’s a retired municipal worker who said his pension fund shot up by over $6,000 after the election. I hope it keeps going up, just as it surely has for the past four years.
Trump Country, Right Next to Our City
You generally don’t get Trumpian vibes at chic small plates places in the city.
This isn’t the city.
This is Nassau County, home to the Islanders, Greek diners and their pizza burgers, Punjabi spots, Colombian panaderias, infinite Italian restaurants, a loving community of Cybertrucks, Land Rovers galore, rich folks, working-class folks, a Tom Colicchio restaurant that serves the best spicy bucatini, at least three H-Marts, a strip mall so stupidly fancy that Billy Joel ribbed it in a song, and a strip of Long Beach bars that get absolutely insane during an October event known as “Irish Day;” I once saw a 13-year-old barfing on a seaside jetty afterward. Sláinte!
Nassau is where I grew up. It’s a county that Trump flipped this year, winning it by 33,000 votes. My favorite waiter at a local pub, a newly minted citizen from the Former Soviet Union, told me on Saturday he voted for Trump because he was worried about the direction of our country and our standing in the world.
The jobless rate in Nassau is almost impossibly low.
Trump did even better in Suffolk County, which extends out to wealthy communities in the Hamptons and Montauk. There, he picked up 80,000 more votes than he did four years ago.
These Republican vibes aren’t new. Shortly before our president-elect beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton nearly a decade ago, I was hanging out at a packed Greek spot in Syosset. And a close relative said this way too loudly: “How could anyone vote for this guy?” You won’t be surprised when I tell you that things got very uncomfortable very quickly at the bar!
I Know You’re Worried About Crime in NYC. It’s Okay.
Before the presidential campaign picked up in earnest, I was telling a nice Long Island Pizza Guy that I lived in the city. He immediately responded by asking whether I felt safe there.
I was familiar with the line of questioning.
When my mom took me to South Carolina as a 15-year-old, we went on this great dolphin-watching tour. The guide spoke at length about the bottlenosed mammals, and then he switched things up, as interactive hosts often do, and he asked me how many people get murdered in New York City every day.
I can’t remember what I told the Dolphin Guy thirty years ago — when New York felt pretty okay to me — but I can tell you what I told the Pizza Guy this spring: that I felt safe.
“Really?,” he said.
Really. I feel safe. It’s the same thing I tell my Long Island family when they ask me this — all the time. A few relatives even stopped going into the city altogether because they’re worried about crime.
Indeed, it’s quite possible that you, as a reader, are nervous as well. And that’s okay! It’s natural to worry about personal safety.
But here’s the thing. Local Republicans campaigned heavily on these fears during the last midterms — while media coverage of crime actually ended up outpacing its rise, Politico reported. This election season, both parties bombarded Long Island residents with ads about migrants and the border. And Trump secured his return to the White House in part by spreading racist immigrant “invasion” rhetoric — alongside false claims of migrant-fueled violent crime.
All that stuff has an impact on our collective psyche.
If an editor ever sent me to a restaurant and my response was “hey, wait a minute is that a safe part of the city?,” they’d justifiably question whether I’m the right person to be reviewing restaurants. Because New York is safe by big city standards. Major crimes — including murder, grand larceny, and burglaries — are down year to date. Crimes committed on the subway and other forms of transit are down, as are shootings — but felony assaults and rape are moving in the wrong direction.
No, New York isn’t perfect, but it ain’t turning into Gotham.
Here’s the thing, though. When I talk to the Pizza Guys — and my relatives — I keep these statistics to myself, as one of my deepest beliefs is that lively conversation shouldn’t sound like a presidential debate. And a good rule of thumb is that if someone tells you they don’t feel safe, then maybe the best way of responding isn’t by telling them they should feel safe. Just as I’m wary of telling people whom to vote for.
So I listen to my good family members when they tell me they’re worried about crime.
And then I tell them, and my Pizza Guy, about how much I love living in the city. I remind my family how much they used to enjoy dining out at Frankies in Carroll Gardens, and at Gallaghers steakhouse in Midtown. I tell them about hitting up museum exhibits during the day (go see Edges of Ailey!), awesome new restaurants at night (check out Heroes for amazing stuffed chicken), and how gorgeous the Hudson looks at dusk.
I try to get folks excited about the city I love. That’s what I’ve always done, but I try to lean even more on that these days. Because what worries me is that we’re just not changing whom we talk to based on our political party; we’re also changing what cities we visit.
If you ever spend time clubbing in Huntington — and you might if you’re back home for Thanksgiving from SUNY Binghamton — you’ll come across a tiny cash-only pizzeria. Welcome to Little Vincent’s. This is where almost every seat will be filled by 25-year-olds who are sprinkling something very peculiar over their slices: shredded, uncooked mozzarella cheese.
The mozz — a little Oneonta touch— acts as a safety buffer against the scalding cheese, allowing for quicker eating right out of the oven. Each bite is a little cool, and a little hot. A little stretchy, a little mealy. Does this chaud-froid pie taste good? That’s between you and God. But what a slice. While New Yorkers put burrata on their fancy pizza, Long Island goes Polly-O. Respect.
A Sutton Story About Migrants in Midtown
When a Pizza Guy — or anyone else — asks me if I feel safe in New York, chances are they’re really asking me about migrants, people fleeing extreme poverty and violence in Venezuela and Central America.
These vulnerable folks have improbably (or predictably) become the subject of fear-mongering political ads on Long Island. So many ads.
The migrant crisis has strained the resources of municipalities across the country; New York City has already spent more than $5 billion to help feed and shelter over 210,000 refugees. Nassau and Suffolk, by contrast, have pushed back on plans to house migrants on our spacious 120-mile island, where some front yards are as large as small colleges. And where at least one giant coliseum largely sits empty.
A friend on Long Island recently asked me a pointed Shyamalan-ian question: In the city, do I see migrants?
I see migrants.
And then, I told a shorter version of this story: I used to live by a Midtown hotel that got converted into a migrant shelter. It pretty much looks like any other hotel, except there are security guards instead of doormen — guys who smile and make light banter with the residents as they walk inside. A row of delivery scooters sit outside, while folks hang out on a church stoop next door. And a few blocks away, at an office park that’s historically empty at night, these relocated families sit on benches and gather around tables, reading and chatting while their children play.
It’s really amazing: what used to be a barren stretch of Midtown now feels just a tiny bit more bustling, thanks to these new residents. I’ve never felt unsafe in my neighborhood, but these good people seeking a better life made my home feel even more like a neighborhood. Like a community.
I wish more Long Islanders could see that.
A few years back, I dropped by my local pizzeria to pick up some fried calamari. Honestly, if you’re an Italian restaurant on the Island and you don’t serve fried calamari, then, well, best of luck to you and your business partners. But anyway, when I got home, I noticed that my squid was prepared Brooklyn-style, with the sauce slathered all over the batter. That’s not how we roll. This isn’t Brooklyn.
I called up to mention the oversight, and less than a half-hour later, there’s a Pizza Guy pulling into my driveway with a hefty container of calamari with no sauce weighing it down. The way the God of Strong Island intended.
You don’t get that type of customer service with DoorDash!
The Potential Devastation of Mass Deportations
One thing I’d love to tell my fellow Long Islanders — the Pizza Guys, the cops who keep us safe, the LIRR workers who get us home, the Escalade drivers who cut me off ten f&cking feet before a stop sign, my amazing Trump-supporting family, and my amazing Kamala-supporting family — is that there’s one domestic issue that concerns me more than anything right now.
That issue is Trump’s promised mass deportations.
These plans appear wildly expensive. They seem logistically and legally improbable. But that doesn’t make me any less scared.
There are at least 100,000 or so undocumented folks on Long Island, and nearly half a million in the city.
I’ve seen reports showing how immigrants are a boon to the Long Island and New York economies — and how migrants don’t depress wages. And you probably know that restaurants and food carts are some of the first places that immigrants enter the formal economy, making a few bucks for themselves while providing their homesick friends and curious eaters with all sorts of delicious stuff.
If that’s what helps change your mind about deportations, great. I always love more tasty food. But honestly, how I feel right now is that immigrants don’t owe us their labor or their food. Rather, it is we who owe them our protection.
So many people have sacrificed so much to get here. They’ve given so much to New York and Long Island. Remember, lots of undocumented folks risked their lives to feed us during the depths of the pandemic. It angered me that they didn’t qualify for government aid — even though they’d been paying taxes for years.
I know we all disagree on things. As we should. But I like to think we’ll all be united in opposing mass deportations when the long arm of the law attempts to split mixed-status families. When Trump knocks Haitians off the TPS list. When the government tries to send DACA recipients back to countries they don’t remember and whose languages they don’t speak. When some of the friendly faces in our dining rooms and pizza parlors realize they can’t stay in the country they call home.
It was amazing to see the Tri-State area rally in support of the hospitality industry in the aftermath of Sandy, and during the deepest horrors of COVID. But preventing a human-made catastrophe — mass deportations — could require more nuanced efforts. It could necessitate a greater level of coordination among owners, workers, journalists, lawyers, patrons, and a combination of city and state governments that appear ready to resist, thanks in part to so-called Sanctuary City laws.
Let’s fight for the people who feed us in New York and on Long Island. Let’s fight for the good humans who make us our daily pizza — and also the people who are simply here, doing little else than enjoying the fact that they are not there.
We’re all in this together. No matter whom we voted for.
The Pizza Guys Will Absolutely Feed You
When I was a 26-year-old freelance critic for Time Out, my editors sent me to a Japanese restaurant called Donguri on the Upper East Side. I sat just a few feet away from Sydney Pollack! And I tried fish collar for the first time ever. Super fatty and and delicious! But after I ordered it, something interesting happened.
The waiter, an older Japanese lady, leaned over and whispered: If you didn’t order that, I would’ve had it myself after work. I was in a restaurant, and yet, I was about to eat someone else’s dinner.
I thought of that anecdote recently because on more than one occasion, a Long Island Pizza Guy has let me in after closing. They’ve literally unlocked the door for me.
And on more than one occasion, late at night, I’ve watched various Pizza Guys take home some of the last slices in small boxes for themselves, a nice perk in an era when so many cash-strapped workers are looking for ways to get by. It makes me realize: Some of these staffers have probably been letting me in to order — as a snack — what would’ve been their actual dinner. So I try to show up earlier these days, which is better for a longer chat anyway.
These Pizza Guys, they’re good guys. And like I said, we’re all in this together. No matter whom we voted for.
Some of My Favorite Long Island Pizza Places
I’m sure I’ll have more to say about Long Island pizza again, but let me give you a few quick recommendations:
Umberto’s of New Hyde Park: The conventional wisdom is to order the Grandma here, but I’ve always come for the lush Sicilian slices, with a chewy, caramelized bottom. Also check out the unrelated King Umberto of Elmont for great pizza!
Gino’s of Long Beach: Just a solid cheese slice, no notes. Was my regular spot for about a decade, along with West End Pizza.
Mario’s of Oyster Bay: My favorite Grandma slice on Long Island. Thin crust in the middle, with pulpy tomatoes and a crispy, chew outer rim and a whisper of basil.
Eddie’s of Hillside Avenue: Haven’t been here in decades, but it was a Sutton family staple growing up. This is where you go for thin-crust bar pies, crisp and inhale-able.
Little Vincent’s of Huntington: A tasty, classic cheese slice for late at night. Try the cold mozz add-on, just to say you did it. Then, you’ll probably never need to do it again.
Ryan!!!
Ryan Sutton was the longtime food critic at Eater NY and Bloomberg News. He was born in Queens and raised on Long Island. He has lived in East Atlantic Beach on the South Shore, Oyster Bay, on the North Shore, and Floral Park, on the Central Shore (lol). You can see his Long Beach photography in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy right here.
My first job was as a 16 year old waiter at Fresh Meadows Pizza in Queens. Not quite Long Island vibes, but closer to that than the city. All this to say you nailed the shit out of this essay.
So… how would a biased Lawn Guylander rate New Jersey pizza shops?