But here is where I can help. After more visits to Carmine Street than I can honestly count, plus a stretch of years when my husband and I lived a short subway ride away and treated the neighborhood like our own extended kitchen, I think I can settle at least part of the argument. Not all of it. Pizza people are not reasonable. But the part where everyone stands on the corner debating which slice is the one? I can end that.
Spoiler. It’s Joe’s. Let me explain, and then let me tell you about the sit-down pies half the tourists walk right past on their way to it.
The list, in my order
7 I’d go back to. My verdict on every one, and the ones nearby from my other lists.
Joe's Pizza
- Cost$
- Address7 Carmine Street
I know. Recommending Joe’s feels like recommending water. It’s the slice that shows up in every guidebook, the one with the Spider-Man plaque, the one with a line out the door at 2am. And I spent a genuinely embarrassing amount of energy over the years trying to find a slice that would let me stop recommending it. Something cooler. Something with a story only I knew.
I failed. Every time.
The plain slice at Joe’s, the one at 7 Carmine Street, is an uncomplicated masterpiece. Thin, foldable, a little grease pooling in the cheese, sauce that actually tastes like tomato instead of sugar. It comes out of the case fast and you eat it standing up at the counter because there’s nowhere to sit, and that is part of the point. The whole pie runs about twenty-eight bucks if you want one, but nobody comes here for a whole pie. You come for one slice, maybe two, folded and inhaled on the sidewalk.
A slice costs a few dollars, and yes, the price has crept up over the years like everything else in this city. But it’s still the most honest four-ish dollars you’ll spend downtown. If there’s a better plain slice within a ten-block radius, I’ve yet to find it, and believe me I’ve tried to.
A couple of caveats. Cash makes your life easier here, the line at peak hours is real, and there is no romance to the room. It’s a counter. That’s the whole experience. If you want to sit down with a glass of wine and a candle, keep reading, because Greenwich Village has that too, and those are the spots people skip.
The one slice that actually challenges Joe’s
If anything has come close to unseating my Joe’s loyalty in recent years, it’s L’Industrie Pizzeria at 104 Christopher Street. The Brooklyn original had a cult following for years, and when they opened this West Village shop, the lines followed them across the river. Deservedly.
Their thing is the burrata slice. You order a regular square or a plain slice, and then they crown it, mid-reheat, with a soft blob of burrata that melts into the hot cheese. It sounds like a gimmick. It is not a gimmick. These bad boys are enormous, old-world in the crust, and genuinely one of the best slices in the entire city right now. 50 Top Pizza keeps handing them the best-slice honors and I have stopped arguing with that.
So why isn’t it my number one? Honestly, the line. When it’s twenty people deep in the rain, a plain slice at Joe’s two blocks over starts looking very reasonable. But if you’re in the neighborhood and the queue is short, get the burrata slice. Then get a plain one to compare. This is the good kind of homework.
Between these two you’ve basically got the whole slice argument covered, and if you want the wider citywide version of this debate I’ve laid out my full ranking of the best pizza joints in New York City elsewhere. Spoiler, Joe’s makes that list too.
L'Industrie Pizzeria
- Address104 Christopher Street
John's of Bleecker Street
- Address278 Bleecker Street
Now the sit-down pies. Start with John’s of Bleecker Street, at 278 Bleecker, because it’s the one people literally walk past. They see the line at the pizza counters up the block and never notice that this coal-fired institution has been turning out whole pies at the same address since 1934.
Here’s the rule that trips everyone up. John’s does not sell slices. It never has. You commit to a whole pie or you don’t come in, which is exactly why the impatient slice crowd keeps moving. Their loss. The crust comes out of an 850-degree coal oven with a char you cannot fake in a gas deck, a little smoke, a little blister, thin and crackling at the edge.
I have shared many a pie in one of those creaky wooden booths, the ones carved up with decades of initials, and I will tell you it is one of the most quietly romantic pizza rooms in the city. Get the plain or the sausage, split a bottle of something red, and take your time. This is not a fold-and-run slice. This is dinner.
The honest downside. It can get loud and touristy at peak dinner hours, and the wait for a booth on a Friday night is not short. Go a little early, or go on a weeknight, and it transforms into the neighborhood spot it actually is.
Song' e Napule
- Address146 West Houston Street
If John’s is the coal-fired old guard, Song’ e Napule at 146 West Houston Street is the Naples answer, and it’s the one I send people to when they say they want “real” Neapolitan without the influencer wait list. It’s been here since 2015, run by a family who actually trained in Naples, and it still doesn’t get the crowds it deserves.
The Margherita is the tell. San Marzano tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil, a puffy leopard-spotted cornicione, and a soft center you eat with a fork and knife because that’s how it’s done. No shame in the fork. This is a wetter, softer pizza than the crackle of John’s, and the two styles are barely the same food.
What I love most is that you can almost always get a table. In a neighborhood where the “it” pizza spot means a ninety-minute wait, a serious Neapolitan pie with no line feels like getting away with something. The room is small and warm, the service is genuine, and nobody is rushing you out. Wildly underrated, and I don’t say that lightly.
Ribalta
- Address48 East 12th Street
Ribalta, over on 48 East 12th Street, is the one I pick when the plan is a real dinner and not a pizza pilgrimage. It opened in 2013, it’s run by folks with serious Neapolitan pedigree, and it does the thing I always want and rarely get. Great pizza in a room where you’d actually want to spend two hours.
The pizzas here are proper Neapolitan, blistered and soft, but the reason I keep coming back is the whole package. There’s pasta if someone in your group is being difficult about pizza (it happens), a real wine list, and the kind of casual buzz where a table of six can get loud and nobody minds. We have ended more than one long walk through the Village at this table.
What to skip? Don’t come here expecting the crispy, foldable New York slice. That’s not what this is, and if that’s your craving you’ll leave confused. Come for the Naples-style pie and the sit-down evening, and it delivers exactly that.
Bleecker Street Pizza
- Address69 Seventh Avenue South
Back to the slice world for a second, because I’d be lying by omission if I left out Bleecker Street Pizza at 69 Seventh Avenue South. This corner has been slinging slices since 2004, and their claim to fame is the Nonna Maria, a fresh-mozzarella, marinara, basil and parmesan number that has won a pile of awards and earned every one of them.
It’s a different animal than Joe’s. Fresher, wetter, more of a compose-a-slice situation than the plain-cheese classic. On a night when I want that basil-and-fresh-mozz brightness instead of the old-school grease, this is where I go. And unlike some of the sit-down spots, it keeps very late hours, which has saved me on more than one post-midnight walk home.
Mama's Too West Village
- Address323 Bleecker Street
One more, for the Detroit-and-grandma-slice crowd. Mama’s Too, the Upper West Side favorite, has a West Village outpost at 323 Bleecker Street, and it does thick, crispy-bottomed square slices loaded with things like hot soppressata and aged mozzarella. It’s the opposite of a thin foldable Joe’s slice in every way, which is exactly why it belongs on this list.
The corners are the whole reason to go. Crunchy, caramelized cheese pushed right to the edge of the pan. Get a square and a round if you can’t decide, because you genuinely cannot go wrong, and the round pies here are no afterthought either.
So what actually ends the argument?
Here’s my honest ruling after all these years. If someone hands you one visit and one craving, the slice question ends at Joe’s on Carmine, with L’Industrie’s burrata slice as the only real challenger and the tiebreaker being whichever line is shorter. That’s the fold-and-walk answer.
But if you’ve got an evening and a person to share it with, don’t stand on the corner. Duck into John’s for the coal-fired char, or Song’ e Napule for the Naples pie with no wait, or Ribalta if you want to make a night of it. Those are the pies the tourists photograph from the sidewalk and then walk right past, and that’s their mistake to make, not yours.
A couple of logistics before you go. Greenwich Village and the West Village blur together here, so don’t stress the exact border. Bring cash where you can, expect lines at the famous counters after dark, and pace yourself, because the whole point of this neighborhood is that you can hit two or three of these on a single slow afternoon. If you want to build a bigger crawl out of it, my West Village happy hour guide pairs nicely with a slice, and for a different borough’s take I stand by my list of the best pizza joints in Brooklyn. Uptown folks, I haven’t forgotten you either, the Upper West Side pizza scene holds its own. And if you’re doing all of this on a budget, plenty of these slices land squarely in my roundup of NYC cheap eats under fifteen dollars.
Now the part where I hand it over to you. I know I’ve left something off, because with pizza I always do. Which Greenwich Village slice or pie did I miss, and whose corner are you willing to fight for? Tell me, because I keep hoping one of them might, just might, finally make me stop recommending Joe’s.
Happy folding, Antonina
