Old Friends, Old Pizza THERE AND HERE Lombardi's, at 32 Spring Street in Manhattan, is both old and new. The original Lombardi's, licensed to sell pizza in 1905, was located at 53½ Spring Street. It closed some time ago and was reopened by the the original Lombardi's grandson in 1994 at 32 Spring Street. Sometimes the Slice editorial team gets so caught up in search of the consummate New York pie, we often lose sight of how pampered pizza life in this town can be. Not that the arcana of turning coals (Lombardi's coal-fired oven is pictured at right) to... More

SAY NUMBER 13: Dom DeMarco, Slice's "Italian hero," makes the cover of this week's Village Voice. The alt-weekly's Robert Sietsema tallies his top 100 Italian restaurants, DeMarco of Di Fara fame clocking in at lucky thirteen. Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice runs down his top 100 Italian restaurants. Seeing as how pizza is Italian or Italian American (depending on style), there are more than a few pizzerias in the mix. The usual suspects appear throughout as well as a few surprises and what might be hidden gems. Following, we've digested the list, ignoring any nonpizza establishments. For the full... More

Thanks to reader Greg, we're able to present to you the pizza-family-tree graphic that originally ran with Eric Asimov's June 10, 1998, New York Times story "New York Pizza, the Real Thing, Makes a Comeback." Greg graciously volunteered to snap a picture of this illustration, which hangs on the wall of Totonno's, at the most recent meeting of the Slice Pizza Club. It's a little blurry—it's difficult to get a good photo in low light and when you're trying to get newsprint into focus—but we think you'll be able to read it.... More

Low Culture gets a fake scoop, posting a fake interview with News Corp scion Lachlan Murdoch. In it, Rupert's son and the third-most-powerful macher at the media giant, raves about a powerful pizza-macher: Lombardi's pizza is great. We were gonna put in a coal-burning pizza oven, but then my wife—that would be supermodel Sarah O'Hare—reminded me of Lombardi's. Saved me $20,000!... More

Lombardi's gets a quick mention in the October 23–30, 2003 issue of Time Out New York. In that magazine's "It Happened Here!" sectionette, cleverly subhedded "The Life of Pie," Katherine Pushkar writes: For many New Yorkers, "eating in" actually means take-out Chinese or a large pie. Finding the first lo mein merchant is like eating soup with chopsticks, but pinpointing the first pizza purveyor's spot is a cinch. Genarro Lombardi opened his grocery at 53½ Spring Street in 1897, and by 1905 he'd gotten a restaurant license, giving the city and the nation its first pizza parlor. At some point,... More