We enjoy ourselves a good pizza, so we’re lucky to live where we live, because the New York City area – thanks to its history of Italian-American immigration – is home to some of the most well-rated pizza places in the country.  We’ve had our fair share of pizza in NYC proper, but we recently decided to venture out and try a few spots outside the city.  Today we’re going to feature some restaurants on Long Island that have some pretty good slices and pies.  Interestingly, what we discovered is that each place is within walking distance of a Long Island Railroad station, so you could visit all these spots just by taking a train from the city.  In any case, here’s our recommendations for good pizza on the island – just be warned that we do feature some meat pizzas here.

We’ll start off with Salvatore’s Coal Oven Pizza in Port Washington.  They do whole pies only (there’s even a sign right when you enter reminding you not to ask for slices), so we got their margherita pizza topped with roasted red peppers – and it came to our table absolutely steaming fresh out of the oven.

South of Port Washington, and just east of the Queens border, is Eddie’s in New Hyde Park.  Eddie’s specializes in bar pies, which are personal pizzas made on a super thin crust.  Miriam got a cheese and tomato bar pie with chopped hot cherry peppers on top …

… while Cyril had a bar pie-sized Eddie’s special, which has sausage, pepperoni, sliced meatballs, onion, peppers, and mushrooms on it.

Also in New Hyde Park is Umberto’s, and we learned that the thing to get there is grandma pie slices.  On the right here is a traditional grandma slice, and on the left is a grandma slice topped with fresh mozzarella, fresh tomato slices, and basil.

And we apologize for this incoming confusion, but we also enjoyed King Umberto in Elmont for some more grandma slices.  Here’s a vodka slice, made with fresh mozzarella …

… and here’s one of their newest creations, a grandma slice with plum tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella, drizzled with hot honey.

Now if you travel all the way to the bottom of Long Island, you’ll find Gino’s in Long Beach.  We opted for some more traditional slices there:  one cheese, and one from their “special” pizza, made with pepperoni, sausage, peppers, onions, and mushrooms.

A little east of Long Beach is Merrick, where you can find La Piazza.  There we got ourselves a combination of regular and square slices:  here’s a vodka square (on the left), a grandma slice made with fresh mozzarella and plum tomato sauce (on top), and a regular Neapolitan slice (on the left).

Now so far all the pizza places we’ve featured have been in Nassau County, but if you’re willing to venture a little further out you can also check out Little Vincent’s in Huntington.  They serve up traditional slices and toppings, but the thing they’re especially known for is cold cheese pizza.  If that sounds weird or confusing, trust us  – it’s really good!  It’s a regular slice of oven-fresh pizza topped with a handful of chilled shredded mozzarella.  At Little Vincent’s they’re pretty generous with that extra cheese on top, which makes for an excellent contrast with the warm pizza underneath.

If we had to pick, we’d say that King Umberto was our favorite out of all these places – but we really did like them all.  We got to try a bunch of grandma slices, some traditional as well as more unusual toppings, a bar pie, a coal oven pie, and one cold cheese slice.  We don’t get out to Long Island all that often, and when we do it’s usually to go to the more coastal areas, so it was nice to explore the interior of the island and some of its towns.  It’s also great that you can get to each of these pizza places on public transportation, so if you’re looking to try New York pizza outside of the city, you can make a day of it visiting any one of these spots.