Bay Ridge Pizza Hall of Fame

New York has the best pizza in America and Brooklyn has some of the best pizza in New York. And some of the best pizza in Brooklyn is in Bay Ridge.

Here, as a result of extensive testing over decades, is a list of my top five pizzerias in Bay Ridge:

1. Grandma's Original Pizza, 6918 Third Avenue, 718-833-4646. Everything here is of championship caliber, but my favorites are a) Grandmama's Pizza, a crispy thin crust square, with mozzarella, marinara sauce, fresh basil, olive oil, topped off with sharp romano cheese, and b) margherita pizza ( similar to grandmama's but a from a large round pie that isn't crisp.) Fabulous.
2. Pizza Wagon, Fifth Avenue, off 86th Street. Great round pie. Good square.
3. Rocco's, 79th Street and Fifth Avenue. Great round pie. Good square.
4. Lento's. Ovington and Third Avenues. Serving very good thin crust pizza on ancient wood tables since the 1930s.
5. Elegante, Fifth Avenue, between 69th and Ovington. Bare-bones, but a good salty slice essentially unchanged since the mid 1960s.