Discover the best pizza in Brooklyn

Brooklyn is where American pizza grew up. The borough's coal ovens go back a century, to a Coney Island counter that opened in 1924 and traced its craft to the first pizzeria in the United States. What started as southern Italian immigrant cooking became the template the rest of the country spent the next hundred years copying.

The signature here is the New York slice, but Brooklyn's version is its own thing: a wide, foldable round with a crisp underside, pulled from decades-old coal and gas decks. Di Fara in Midwood built its name on one man dressing every pie by hand, and the technique still sets the bar across the borough.

The borough runs wider than the classic slice. Neapolitan wood-fired pies anchor Roberta's in Bushwick, Detroit pan squares turn up at Emmy Squared, and thin-crust rounds at Lucali and L'Industrie pull lines that wrap the block. Across the river, Manhattan keeps its own slice tradition.

The densest pizza districts are Williamsburg, Bushwick, Carroll Gardens, Dumbo, and Greenpoint, with Midwood and Coney Island holding the old-guard coal ovens further out. Under the Brooklyn Bridge, Grimaldi's and Juliana's sit almost side by side, both tied to the same pizzaiolo.

Come hungry and come early. The marquee rooms do not all take bookings, and weekend waits of an hour are normal at the counters that only sell whole pies. Skip the slice shops clustered at the subway exits for tourists and walk a few blocks. The 63 Brooklyn pizzerias on our map are ranked by what people who came for the pizza actually thought, not by the longest line.