Head to this venerable pizzeria ensconced in a white frame house in the Schuylerville section of the Bronx for thin-crust pies. It’s a true neighborhood spot, around since 1959, and has snagged headlines for its white and sausage-topped pizzas — two customer favorites. Louie & Ernie’s serves both slices and pies, as well as a long list of wonderful calzones, but little else.

In an impossibly small space, the luscious square slices are on full display, each of them thicker, greasier, and more lushly topped than the one before. The crusts are crunchy, too, and the tomato sauce is slightly sweet. Note the stylish cupping pepperoni. The poached pear and gorgonzola square is unforgettable, and evidence of Mama’s originality. There’s another location in the West Village.

This is a rare Italian bakery that specializes in pizza in a manner similar to the bakeries of Boston’s North End; it also offers Italian cookies and pastries. Head to the back counter for a square slice with a thick blanket of melted mozzarella atop a tangy layer of tomato sauce, and try to arrive just as a pie is coming out of the oven.

John’s is one of the city’s oldest pizza operations, and it has retained much of its original New York character. Founded in 1929 by John Sasso, an alum of Lombardi’s, the restaurant churns out very thin, coal-oven-fired pizzas judiciously topped with sauce and cheese. Pizzas here are sold strictly by the pie (the awning famously says, “No slices”), with additional toppings like sliced meatballs, onions, ricotta, black olives, crushed garlic, pepperoni, ground sausage, and double mozzarella.

Open in one place or another — the Jersey shore, East Village, San Francisco, now the Lower East Side — since 1996, Una Pizza Napoletana produces some of the most perfect evocations of pizzas as they are mde in Naples, the precursors of our own New York style. These are smallish pies, not inexpensive, dappled with char, steaming straight from the oven. Only five or six different configurations are offered on any given day (Thursday, Friday, Saturday only), using scintillating ingredients.

Scarr’s Pizza swapped spaces, opening a new spot 35 Orchard Street, across from the original slice shop. Even though the new location is bigger than its humble beginnings at 750-square feet, customers sometimes still form lines. Owner Scarr Pimentel, who grinds his own flour, churns out what has often been described as a standard bearer for the perfect slice.

Owner Massimo Laveglia describes his Williamsburg pizzeria as a slice spot, but one that embroiders on the traditional concept with some flair. For one thing, the crust is of higher quality, and for another, the toppings — which include ricotta, burrata, spicy salami, and truffle oil — are applied to plain slices as they are ordered. There is a new branch in the West Village.

One thing that sets New York’s pizza scene apart: You can find just about any style imaginable. La Rose serves thick, Detroit-style slices distinguished by their crisp, cheesy crusts. The pizzas are baked until they’re crunchy on the bottom, but still tender in the middle, then heaped with toppings, like pepperoni, meatballs, anchovies, and vodka sauce. The slices are more expensive — $5 to $8 each — but each one feels like a small meal.

Luigi’s opened in 1973 in the same well-worn premises near Green-Wood Cemetery. and is now run by Gio Lanzo, whose father-founder Luigi died a few years ago. Pizza has been made there the same way for the last 50 years. Get a grandma-slice broccoli rabe pizza, a white pie, a soppressata slice flecked with green onion, or a regular pizza with fresh mozzarella or vodka sauce.

Denino’s is perhaps the most famous pizzeria in Staten Island. Its most exciting pizza, the clam pie, is a molten mass of briny minced clams and mozzarella on a crisp, nicely tanned crust. The dining room is an extension of a barroom that originated in 1937 as a dockworker’s hangout. Denino’s expanded to Greenwich Village in 2016 (followed by the Jersey Shore) and the new place is nearly as good as the original, minus the maritime atmosphere.

This old-school Bensonhurst pizzeria, open since 1939, is a rewarding nice-weather destination with its outdoor setup, yet the indoor dining room (with an extensive menu of Italian American classics) is too often overlooked. Go here for pillowy square pies and the lesser known round ones. Slices are available too, but if you want toppings, you must order a pizza. Leave room for spumoni. This is a good spot for groups.

Reopened for sit-down following the pandemic, the family-run Totonno’s was recently featured on Netflix’s Somebody Feed Phil, highlighting its near 100-year reign in Coney Island as one of the city’s original coal-oven pizzas. The list of toppings is spare, the premises is small and looks like someone’s living room, but the pies are superb when the oven is cranking at peak temperature, which approaches 900 degrees. (Note that in the off-season it’s only open Saturday and Sunday.)