Your Guide To The 4 Most Common Types Of NYC-Style Pizza

Pizza has been a cornerstone of New York City culture since the early 1900s. It's woven into the very fabric of this iconic American city, brought to life by the Italian immigrants who helped build it from the ground up. Pizza is accessible to all levels of society and doubles as both a working class meal and a gourmet experience, with pizzas selling anywhere from $1.50 a slice to $60 and more for a pie. Pizza is such an integral part of the New York experience that locals eat it a certain way, favor specific styles, have their own pizza language (which tourists always get wrong), and even use its cost-per-slice as a metric for subway fare. 

Though New York is famous for its 18-inch, traditionally coal-fired, thin-crust pies and the foldable New York slice, the city's pizza culture has blossomed with innovation while also keeping one foot rooted in tradition. You'll find all kinds of pizza styles and toppings in New York City, including pies with unconventional toppings, like shrimp and lobster, or the chop cheese pizza, which features ground beef, American cheese, ketchup, and mayo. You could devote an entire visit to New York City to exploring the pizza scene. And if you do, here are the four most common pizza types you'll encounter in the Big Apple.

New York-style coal oven pizza is America's original pizza, which is reported to have debuted in the early 1900s at Lombardi's, the nation's first pizzeria. New York-style pizza is between 16 and 20 inches in size (the classic style is 18 inches), with a thin crust that's blackened on the bottom from being baked in a coal oven at 500 to 900 degrees Fahrenheit. The plain version is topped with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and oregano, and finished with grated pecorino or parmesan cheese and extra virgin olive oil.

Like the city itself, New York-style pizza is larger than life, a spectacle that's typically served as a whole pie that'll likely take up most of the table. The perfect NYC-style coal oven pizza has bubbly, golden-brown cheese with smoky, caramelized flavors and a charred, blistered crust that is crispy but also slightly chewy and flexible enough to fold. Lucky Charlie in Bushwick is an NYC pizzeria that's earning love from pizza fans for its New York-style pizza, which is made in a coal oven that dates back to the 1890s.

The New York slice is an extra-large piece of triangle-shaped pizza, so oversized that it hangs off the edges of a paper plate. What makes it special is how easy it is to eat on the go. It's a slice tailored for busy New York life, cut from a classic 18-inch New York-style pizza and topped with tomato sauce, dry mozzarella cheese, and maybe pepperoni or sausage. You're sure to find twists on the classic style with all kinds of extra toppings, but the iconic New York slice is notably uncomplicated.

Its texture, shape, and size are very similar to New York's famous dollar slice pizza (inflation has caused prices to rise, and some say New York's dollar slice is dead). However, dollar slices are generallymade with less care and lower-quality ingredients.  They're also slightly thicker and a little less crispy.

The crust is the signature element of a perfect New York slice. It should be thin and leopard-spotted with char on the bottom, but also sturdy enough to stay upright, and a little rigid when you fold it hot dog-style and eat as you walk. Its edges should be crisp and topped with mozzarella cheese with just the right amount of pull; you should be able to get a good stretch of cheese when you take a bite without having a mudslide effect and getting all the cheese at once.

New York City's Sicilian pizza is soft, fluffy, and served in trademark squares — in short, it's near-perfect comfort food (and here's our ode to Sicilian pizza). Sicilian pizza is inspired by a focaccia-style pizza creation called sfincione, which was invented in Palermo, Sicily. Today's New York Sicilian pizza is a dressed-down version of sfincione, but cut into squares rather than served as a whole pie. Sfincione is traditionally topped with tomato sauce, onions, anchovies, caciocavallo cheese, and other grated cheeses for garnish.  A classic New York Sicilian pizza is topped with a sweet, slow-cooked tomato sauce, mozzarella, and oregano.

In NYC, Sicilian-style pizza is made two ways: The traditional manner and an "upside down" version with the cheese buried under a sauce that's less sweet and atop a crust that's firmer and less soggy. The latter is a style popularized in the 1950s era that's experiencing quite the comeback today. While both takes on Sicilian pizza are topped with just three simple ingredients, there are also plenty of places that have options to add others, like sauteed mushrooms or pepperoni.

New York's Neapolitan pizzas are individual-sized, light on the toppings, cooked at a high heat in a wood-fired oven for no longer than 90 seconds, and meant to be eaten fresh. The size of these little pies sets them apart from the rest of New York's gargantuan pizzas, but that's not the only thing that makes them different. The crust is light and fluffy, a little mushy at the center, and gently blistered and spotted with char. They're the delicate cousin to the bold and fluffy Sicilian pizza, a New York take on pizza from Naples, Italy. 

Modern NYC Neapolitan pizza is topped like a classic margherita pizza, with San Marzano tomatoes, fresh basil, olive oil, and patches of fresh mozzarella or bufala cheese (the high moisture kind, not the dry mozzarella on a New York slice). Variations on the classic pie include topping combos like smoked salmon and dill, a pizza known as quattro formaggi, with parmesan, provolone, mozzarella, and gorgonzola cheeses, and pizza capricciosa, with mushrooms, artichokes, olives, and ham. Also look for a version with spicy salami called pizza diavola.