Discover the best pizza in Boston

Boston pizza pulls in two directions. The North End, the city's old Italian quarter, has served coal and wood-fired pies since Regina Pizzeria opened there in 1926, while the suburbs south of the city gave the region its own oddball original: bar pizza.

Greater Boston bar pizza is a small, thin round baked in a shallow steel pan until the cheese crisps up the sides into a lacy brown edge, a South Shore tavern staple that rarely leaves Massachusetts. Alongside it the modern Neapolitan wave runs through the city, the same one that reshaped New York, and NY-Style is the most common style on our map.

The most popular pizzeria in the city by review volume is Ernesto's Pizza, one of 29 we list, with the densest cluster still in the North End around Hanover Street. Did you know Boston's bar pizza predates the artisan wave by decades? It was a Prohibition-era tavern food built to sell drinks, not to travel.

Prices read mid-range. A wood-fired margherita usually lands between 15 and 21 dollars; the bar-pizza rooms run cheaper. The spots ranked here are ranked by what people who came for the pizza actually thought, not by which room the students lined up outside.