Neighborhood Guide
Best Pizza in DUMBO and Brooklyn Heights
One short block under the Brooklyn Bridge holds three pizzerias. Grimaldi's and Juliana's sit 20 metres apart, and the L&B Spumoni Gardens outpost is 40 metres from Grimaldi's door. You can stand on Old Fulton Street and see all three.
The two coal ovens are the same man's story. Patsy Grimaldi opened the room in 1990, lost the family name in court, sold the business, and came back in 2012 to reopen his original space next door as Juliana's — so the pizzeria carrying his name is not the one he runs. The whole lineage is mapped here. Regulars will argue about which is better for as long as you let them.
Both serve whole pies only, which is what makes Table 87 on Atlantic Avenue interesting: it built its pitch on being the first in Brooklyn to sell coal-oven pizza by the slice. And L&B brings the Gravesend upside-down square up from southern Brooklyn — sauce on top, cheese caramelised underneath.
Walk away from the bridge and it quietens down fast. Dellarocco's is a wood-fired neighborhood room on Hicks Street with no tourist traffic to speak of, and Piz-zetta near Borough Hall feeds the courthouse crowd a straightforward slice.
Every Pizzeria in DUMBO and Brooklyn Heights (6 spots)
A Brooklyn Heights neighborhood pizzeria with a wood-fired oven and a warm, convivial dining room. Solid Neapolitan pies with quality ingredients, a reliable wine list, and a loyal local following.
A DUMBO fixture since 1990, cooking coal-oven pies with a thin, blistered crust in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. One of the pizzerias most credited with starting the modern NYC pizza pilgrimage.
Opened in 2012 by Patsy Grimaldi in the very space where he first started. Same coal oven, same thin char-edged crust; regulars debate endlessly which DUMBO neighbor is better.
The DUMBO outpost of the Gravesend original, bringing the same upside-down Sicilian square — sauce on top, cheese caramelized on the bottom — to one of Brooklyn's busiest tourist corridors.
A Downtown Brooklyn pizzeria near Borough Hall, serving the courthouse and office crowd with classic NY-style pies.
Brooklyn Heights spot billing itself as the first in the borough to offer coal-oven pizza by the slice. Thin, charred crust with a crisp undercarriage — a solid stop near DUMBO.