Umberto's of New Hyde Park

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• Top 6 Pizza on Long Island

  Currently #1 · score 0

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• King Umberto

  King Umberto opened in Elmont in 1976 on the corner of Meacham Avenue and Hempstead Turnpike — a small, cramped operation with the bar squeezed directly between the pizzeria and the dining room — before the restaurant expanded into a larger space in February 1987 that could properly accommodate its growing base of regulars. The restaurant carries the "Umberto's" name through the same extended Corteo family network responsible for the original Umberto's of New Hyde Park, though King Umberto has built its own, distinct identity and history since. That history includes a genuinely central role in one of New York pizza's more contested origin stories. After King Umberto's ownership changed hands to brothers Rosario and Sal Fuschetto, they hired two pizza makers in the 1980s, Ciro Cesarano and Angelo Giangrande, who recognized the commercial potential in a thin, rectangular, home-style pan pizza and put it on King Umberto's menu — the same style of pizza the Corteo family had been making informally at their New Hyde Park location. A regular customer, Anthony "Tippy" Nocella, suggested the pizza reminded him of something a grandmother would make rather than a restaurant, and the name stuck. In 1989, Nocella accompanied Giangrande and Fuschetto to a Delicato Foods pizza competition in Farmingdale, where, in Giangrande's own account, "my pizza was gone before the competition even started" — the moment that pushed grandma pizza into wider Long Island recognition. Ciro Cesarano's son, Giovanni Cesarano, now runs King Umberto as managing partner, having started making pizza there at 16 years old when a scheduled pizza maker didn't show up for a busy holiday shift — a start that turned into a two-decade career at the same restaurant. Giovanni has pushed King Umberto's pizza program well beyond its grandma-pizza roots, winning first place in the 2018 Caputo Cup for an award-winning gluten-free Sicilian-style pizza and second place in the 2019 Caputo Cup for a high-hydration, three-day-fermented Roman-style pizza — genuinely competitive, technically demanding styles that put King Umberto in direct conversation with serious pizza makers nationally, not just other Long Island shops. That combination — a genuine claim to the invention of an entire pizza category, plus a second-generation owner actively winning national competitions in completely different styles decades later — gives King Umberto a rare dual identity as both a historical landmark and a currently competitive kitchen. For a Long Island pizza list, King Umberto is the essential "where grandma pizza actually got its name" entry — an Elmont pizzeria run by the son of the pizza maker credited with the naming, now also a Caputo Cup award winner pushing Roman- and Sicilian-style pizza well past its own grandma-pizza legacy.

• Salvatore's Coal Oven Pizzeria

  Salvatore's Coal Oven Pizzeria traces its roots to 1933, when Pat and Carmella Lancieri opened the legendary Patsy's Pizzeria on First Avenue in Harlem — one of the small handful of restaurants credited with establishing New York's original coal-oven pizza tradition. More than sixty years later, in 1996, the Lancieris' great-nephews, Fred and Marco, brought that same technique to Long Island, opening what's documented as the Island's first-ever coal-fired, brick-oven pizzeria on Shore Road in Port Washington, and naming the restaurant Salvatore's after their father. The coal-fired brick oven is the whole reason the pizzeria exists in this specific form. Coal burns significantly hotter than a standard gas or electric pizza oven, giving the crust a distinctive char and a crisp-yet-chewy structure that's difficult to replicate with other cooking methods — the same technical foundation that made Patsy's a foundational name in New York coal-oven pizza nearly a century ago. That Fred and Marco chose to import that specific technique to Long Island in 1996, rather than a more generic wood-fired or standard gas-oven approach already common in the region, reflects a direct, deliberate continuation of their family's original method rather than a loosely inspired homage. Being first matters here in a very literal sense: introducing coal-oven pizza to Long Island in 1996 meant Salvatore's had no local template to follow and no local competition executing the same technique, giving the restaurant nearly three decades to refine its specific approach to coal-fired baking largely on its own terms. Later Long Island coal-oven pizzerias that have opened in the years since have effectively been following a path Salvatore's cut first. The restaurant has stayed in the same Port Washington location for essentially its entire history, building a reputation as a foundational name in Long Island's own pizza landscape rather than remaining a footnote to its more famous Harlem lineage — regulars know Salvatore's for its own decades of consistency on Shore Road, not simply as "the Patsy's family's Long Island outpost." That's a meaningful distinction for a restaurant whose founding story is so closely tied to a more famous predecessor. For a Long Island pizza list, Salvatore's Coal Oven Pizzeria is the essential "the Island's first coal oven" entry — a Port Washington pizzeria built by the great-nephews of Patsy's Pizzeria's own founders, bringing a nearly century-old Harlem coal-oven tradition to Long Island in 1996 and refining it there for almost three decades since.

• Blue Moon

  Blue Moon traces its family recipe back more than 50 years in its current Rockville Centre storefront, and the family itself further back still — to a first pizzeria Cosimo Montemurro opened generations earlier, a lineage the family now describes as reaching back roughly 80 years in total. Today the restaurant is run by Cosimo's grandson, Raymond Montemurro, who opened the current Blue Moon location specifically to continue his grandfather's tradition in a stylish, comfortable neighborhood setting rather than simply inheriting an existing building unchanged. The pizza itself comes out of a genuine coal-burning oven, sending out well-blistered pies loaded with classic toppings — sausage, meatballs, and the rest of a traditional Italian-American pizzeria's repertoire — cooked at the high, intense heat coal ovens are specifically valued for. That coal-fired method places Blue Moon among a small group of Long Island pizzerias still committed to the more labor-intensive, higher-maintenance coal-burning approach rather than the gas or electric ovens most competitors have long since switched to for convenience. Raymond Montemurro has described the restaurant's food as steeped in tradition "with a slight modern twist" — a framing that acknowledges Blue Moon isn't simply freezing his grandfather's original recipes in place, but updating them carefully enough to stay relevant to contemporary diners without abandoning the coal-oven technique and family recipes that define the restaurant's identity. That balance between inherited technique and gradual modernization is part of what's let Blue Moon stay a genuine multi-generational business rather than either stagnating or losing its identity to a full modern rebrand. Rockville Centre's Park Avenue corridor has real pizza competition of its own — several other well-regarded pizzerias operate within walking distance — which has kept Blue Moon's standards under constant local pressure to perform, even with five decades of history behind it. That the Montemurro family has held its position in that competitive stretch across three generations, through a coal-oven method that takes real skill and maintenance to run well, speaks to a level of consistency that newer entrants into the neighborhood have had to measure themselves against. The roughly 80-year total family lineage, running from Cosimo Montemurro's original pizzeria down through his grandson Raymond, means Blue Moon's current owner grew up around the coal-oven technique rather than learning it as an adopted trade — a meaningfully different foundation than a chef-owner who trained elsewhere and later decided to open a pizzeria of his own. For a Long Island pizza list, Blue Moon is the essential "three generations, one coal oven" entry — a Rockville Centre pizzeria tracing back roughly 80 years through the Montemurro family, still baking classic, well-blistered pies in a genuine coal-burning oven under the grandson of the family's founding pizzaiolo.

• Amore Pizzeria

  Richard Graffeo, a Brooklyn native, spent years working at four separate pizza places alongside his uncle across Long Island before deciding it was time to put down roots of his own. He bought a storefront in Bay Shore on December 13, 1991, and exactly one month later, on January 13, 1992, opened it as Amore Pizzeria — a name chosen as a direct nod to his uncle's own restaurants, which had operated under the name "Pizzeria Amore." The recipe Graffeo brought to Union Boulevard has stayed essentially unchanged since that January 1992 opening — a genuinely rare claim for a pizzeria to make honestly after more than three decades in business, where recipe drift, cost-cutting substitutions, and ownership changes tend to erode even well-loved originals over time. Graffeo opened Amore with his wife and two young sons at his side, and the restaurant has stayed a family operation through the decades since, which is a meaningful part of why the recipe has held steady rather than been quietly adjusted for margin. Local coverage has tracked that consistency at genuine milestones rather than treating it as a one-time story — Greater Long Island profiled the restaurant's 25th anniversary in Bay Shore, and Patch later covered its 31st year in business under the headline "Everything We Had," a phrase that captures how directly Graffeo has described his own investment in the restaurant since buying that storefront in 1991. Few Long Island pizzerias get two separate rounds of anniversary press coverage from local outlets years apart, and fewer still earn it for staying essentially the same restaurant throughout. That the pizza recipe traces to Graffeo's own apprenticeship years working alongside his uncle, rather than to formal culinary training or a franchise system, gives Amore a direct, single-family lineage that's stayed intact since before the restaurant even had its own address — Graffeo learned the technique at his uncle's pizzerias first, and only opened his own place once he'd fully internalized it, rather than improvising a recipe from scratch on day one. The exact one-month gap between buying the storefront in December 1991 and opening in January 1992 suggests a founder who moved decisively once he'd made the decision to go out on his own, after years of working at someone else's restaurants first — a pattern of patient apprenticeship followed by a fast, committed launch that's held up as the defining shape of Graffeo's whole career in the business. For a Long Island pizza list, Amore Pizzeria is the essential "unchanged recipe, three-plus decades running" entry — a Bay Shore pizzeria Richard Graffeo opened in January 1992 with a recipe learned directly from his uncle's own pizzerias, still run by the same family and still, by the restaurant's own account, unchanged since it opened.

• La Margherita

  La Margherita opened in Medford in 1991, and the family that runs it has built its entire identity around a specific technical claim: it was Long Island's first wood-burning brick oven pizzeria, introducing a cooking method to the region that's since become far more common but that had no established local template when La Margherita first fired up its oven more than three decades ago. That original wood-burning oven has stayed in continuous use since 1991 rather than being replaced by a more convenient modern alternative. Being first with a technique this labor-intensive carries real operational weight — a wood-burning brick oven requires constant attention to fuel, temperature, and airflow in a way gas and electric ovens simply don't, and running one as a restaurant's primary cooking method for over three decades without switching to something easier is itself a sustained commitment few competitors have matched. The 12-inch pizzas that come out of it are built simply and traditionally: fresh, house-made mozzarella, fresh tomato sauce, basil, and olive oil, letting the oven's high, wood-fed heat do most of the actual work rather than relying on elaborate toppings to carry the dish. La Margherita has stayed a family-owned restaurant across what the family itself describes as three generations, a span that covers the entire history of the wood-burning oven's operation — the same oven that opened the restaurant in 1991 has effectively been passed down and maintained across that multi-generational ownership, rather than being installed once and left to a rotating cast of hired kitchen staff. That consistency has been recognized outside the family, too — Newsday has ranked La Margherita among its Top 10 Brick Oven Pizza spots on Long Island, a distinction earned in a category the restaurant itself effectively helped establish locally more than three decades earlier. Being both the historical first mover in wood-fired pizza on the Island and a restaurant still competitive enough to make current best-of rankings is a harder combination to sustain than either distinction alone. Keeping the pizzas to a straightforward, four-ingredient build — fresh mozzarella, tomato sauce, basil, and olive oil, at a modest 12-inch size — is itself a technical choice that puts the burden squarely on the oven and the dough rather than on elaborate toppings, which is exactly the kind of unforgiving format that would expose any inconsistency in a wood-burning setup run for over three decades without a break. For a Long Island pizza list, La Margherita is the essential "the original wood-fired oven" entry — a three-generation, family-run Medford pizzeria that introduced wood-burning brick-oven pizza to Long Island in 1991 and has kept that same original oven running ever since.