A New York slice is a thing of beauty—but so is a whole pie. And there are fewer areas of the city as dense with pizza joints than the theatre district.
And while you can’t beat a 99-cent slice on a street corner between your matinee and evening performances, there are plenty of opportunities to sit down with friends and family and dig into a pizza. And, this being New York City, the options are both limitless and overwhelming. That’s why Playbill, for purely charitable reasons of course, undertook the herculean task of checking out the pizza wares in Broadway's backyard.
Every week, the entire Manhattan team—from the CEO to the interns—settled down with an array of pies from the neighborhood. The conference room was transformed into a buffet where members of all departments became impromptu pizza critics, weighing in on crust density, sauce thickness, and why a smaller pepperoni is superior to the larger sizes.
In the gallery below, you’ll see classic pepperoni and white pizzas, but you’ll also see some more daring pizzas that you might want to consider the next time you sit down before or after a show.
(NB: There are many fine restaurants serving great pizzas that are not included here. For Playbill’s purposes, we stuck to restaurants, located between Sixth and Ninth Avenues and 40th and 54th Streets, that delivered to our office.)
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The Playbill Pizza Primer Part 2
The Playbill Pizza Primer Part 2
22 PHOTOS
Gotham Pizza's House Special: When any pizzeria has a house special, you order it! In addition to Gotham promising parmigiana reggiano on every slice, this one has just one note about it on the menu: "Everything on it!" And Gotham Pizza does not lie, because this one is almost a sensory overload. Almost.
Gotham Pizza's Veggie: Vegetable overload! Oh wait, there's no such thing. Gotham is a classic go-to in the neighborhood, and with a pizza like this it's easy to see why. The combination of mushrooms and the larger onion chunks really hit the spot.
Patzeria Perfect Pizza's Grandma: If this whole taste test project accomplished anything, at the very least it turned more than one person on to the beauty of Grandpa and Grandma pizzas. This grandma, a perfectly calibrated combination of cheese, sauce, and herbs, was a perfect starter pie for newbies.
Patzeria Perfect Pizza's Tomato and Basil: The whole slices of tomatoes used here was delectable, but their weight made eating this one a fork-and-knife situation. Still, the end result was worth having to sit down!
Patzeria Perfect Pizza's Veggie: A rare red pepper sighting! This veggie pizza had a lot going for it, particularly the crips vegetables used and the lack of reliance on a sauce, which is often used to give lifeless veggies flavor.
Radio City Pizza's White Pizza: Is anything more oozily pleasurable than a white pie? This one, creamy and melt-in-your-mouth delicious, was a top pick when it came to cheese factor!
Radio City Pizza's Sicilian Pepperoni: Doesn't that picture say it all? This one was a real mouthful of fluffy cheese and larger, flatter pepperoni than most of the pizzas we tried, but the combination really worked. (And who doesn't love a square slice every now and then!)
Radio City Pizza's Buffalo Chicken: Something about the way the cheese and buffalo chicken were added here made it more atypical of a buffalo chicken pizza than usual. And the thinner crust gives the whole thing a real crunch!
Little Italy Pizza's Vegan: The diced tomatoes, the crisp onions, the durable crust—all of it combined to make this one a real treat for the vegans in our office. And, to be completely honest, even for the carnivores!
Little Italy Pizza's Buffalo Chicken (Louisiana style spicy chicken, fresh mozzarella, blue cheese): Pepperoni is the go-to meat pizza for most of us, but there's a surprisingly large contingent of Playbill staffers who love the spice and heat of a buffalo chicken pic, especially one that's mitigated by the cheese, as this one is.
Patzeria Family and Friends's Pepperoni and Black Olives: Another great example of the power of a small pepperoni, because this one got both the requisite crunch and also the salty flavor you want in a pepperoni without overloading the pizza with grease. And the black olive combination is a classic!
Patzeria Family and Friends' Peppers and Cheese: No one expected to love a cheese and green bell pepper pizza as much as we did, and yet this received across-the-board raves from everyone. A good reminder that it's not necessarily what you're putting on a pizza, it's how you're combining and preparing it.
Serafina - Time Hotel's Tartufo Nero (robiola cheese, fontina, truffle cheese, truffle oil and black truffle): As soon as the box opened and the smell of truffle cheese wafted out, a line formed at this pizza box. What could be more decadent than a thick layer of cheese and three different ways of serving truffles?
Serafina - Time Hotel's Bresaola (fontina cheese, mozzarella, Italian imported bresaola, and baby arugula): Cheese, cheese, and more cheese, but the arugula cuts right through the creaminess with a peppery after taste that has to be tasted to be believed.
Serafina - Time Hotel's 4 Stagioni (tomato, mozzarella, mushrooms, artichokes, pesto, prosciutto di Parma): Take top-grade ingredients, combine them with a flavorful sauce and a chewy crust, and you get some idea of this salty, veggie-heavy pizza that mingles some of our favorite taste profiles for its own singular creation.
Serafina - Time Hotel's Al Porcini (Italian porcini mushrooms, roasted with herbs in a wood-burning oven): Mushroom lovers pay heed, because this is an example of a very simple pizza being done to perfection.
Serafina - Time Hotel's Tonno (sliced sushi grade tuna over a special robiola sauce): Yes, sushi on a pizza was met with cries of outrage and disappointment—until we tried it. Maybe it's the robiola sauce, or the tangy flavors combining, but this was the first pizza finished that day, and several Playbill staff members have asked about where, exactly, it came from so they can revisit it.
Serafina - Time Hotel's
Don Antonio's Gluten-Free Marinara: As simple as you can get, this gluten-free pizza packed more of a flavor punch than we'd been expecting. Thank the marinara, of course, but also Don Antonio's especially tasty take on gluten-free dough.
Don Antonio's Macellaio (tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, sausage, Porchetta, salami crespona, prosciutto di parma, parmigiano Reggiano, basil): We run the gamut of tastes here, and for every gluten-free vegan we have someone who will have all the meat, please and thank you. And for carnivores, you can't go wrong with this high-end version of a meat lover's pie!
Don Antonio's Gluten-Free Prosciutto and Arugula: Playbill staffers are big fans of a slaty prosciutto and a peppery arugula combo, and this one did not fail. That prosciutto was like biting into little slices of heaven!
Don Antonio's Vegana (tomato sauce, zucchini, eggplant, artichokes, mushrooms, grape tomatoes): The range of veggies is what really made this pizza stand out, from the meaty eggplant to the crunch of zucchini.
What are your favorite places to get a slice in Times Square?
To investigate the pizzas shown in the gallery above, visit the websites: Don AntonioGotham Pizza Little Italy Pizza Patzeria Family & Friends Radio City Pizza Serafina Time Square