On my latest trip back to New York last week, my brother and I decided to find out once and for all what is the very best pizza NY has to offer.

We called it the Pizza Challenge. I was going to make up T-Shirts that said "Pizza Challenge 2010," as we went from spot to spot tasting the best pizza in NY.

But then we decided our vacation would go smoother if we were not mugged on every block. So we performed the challenge incognito.

We strategized and decided to hit 4 spots:

1. Lombardi's
2. Ray's
3. Famous Rays
4. Fat Sals

The first 3 are touted as the highest rated pizza by Zagat and other types of city guides.

If you're wondering, "what about Grimaldi's under the Brooklyn Bridge," I've been there and it has no place in this contest. I don't know what kind of pizza they call that, but it's NOT New York pizza. The place is a tourist trap. Their ingredients are very fresh and the pizza does not taste bad, but it's more like some kind of fancy shmancy type of pie. Plus the line you have to wait on to get into that place makes it a complete waste of time.

Now on to the challenge.

In New York, there are around 50 pizza joints using some variant of the name "Rays." For the most part they are independent of each other and try to suck in tourist with the famous name.

They're are 2 that started it all.

Rays


The first is Rays on 27 Prince Street on the northern edge of Little Italy. This is the place that was started in 1959 by made man Ralph Cuomo of the Lucchese crime family. Rays was a front for heroine trafficking, but Cuomo claimed to always keep the drug business separate from the pizza business. Today Rays' day to day operations are still run by the Cuomo family.

The Pizza - It's good, really good. The cheese is crazy fresh and stretches forever as you take a bite. Just a tiny bit of oil drops off a slice, a perfect slice has zero oil dripping off of it, but this is still a very good pizza. The sauce is above average but nothing spectacular. Crust has a good consistency and they have a wide variety of fresh toppings, but the real champion of this slice is the cheese.

Rating:
Cheese - 9.5
Sauce - 8.0
Crust - 8.0
Oil - 7.5
Toppings - 8.0

Total - 8.2


The Famous Rays
The Famous Rays at 6th Avenue and 11th Street in Greenwich Village was started by Mario DiRienzo from Italy in the '70s. The reason the restaurant is named Famous Rays is because there were so many Marios back in his home town, they had to give a nickname to each them so you would know who you were talking about. His was Mario Ray.

The Pizza - At first glance it looks good. Lots of cheese, big slice, and extra melted cheese drizzled on the toppings. However it looks better than it tastes. Bonus points for almost no oil drip, but the cheese and the toppings tasted bland. The crust was too soft and drooped down even when folding the slice. Definitely not the worst pizza, and always better than any of the fast food pies. But NY has much steeper competition. Turns out the most famous part of Famous Rays is it's name.

Rating:
Cheese - 7.0
Sauce - 7.0
Crust - 6.5
Oil - 9.0
Toppings - 6.5

Total - 7.2


Fat Sals
Fat Sals Pizza 730 10th Ave, is not one of the iconic pizza joints in NY. We wanted to randomly pick out an underdog to throw into the challenge because there are an unbelievable amount of small pizza places in NYC, we needed to have them represented as well. So on our way to The Daily Show, we saw this place and decided to stop in for our first slice of the trip. And I'm glad we did.

The Pizza - This pizza is the quintessential NY slice. Huge slice of pizza. Easily 1.5 - 2 times the size of whatever your used to. Excellent cheese, although not quite as good as the first Rays, tastier sauce though and a crust that holds up even under its own size. Not to mention incredible toppings. I had peperoni and my brother had meatball. The peperoni was fresh but I thought the slices were cut a little to thin. However, they made up for it with the meatball. Huge thick slices of fresh meatball covered the slice. Not the usual paper thin meatball slices a lot of places will give you. Overall, Fat Sals was actually better than both of the iconic Rays Pizza.

Rating:
Cheese - 9.0
Sauce - 8.5
Crust - 9.0
Oil - 8.5
Toppings - 9.5

Total - 8.9



Lombardi's
First of all, great name right? It's like it was destined for it to be the official pizza of the Cobra Kai. But it had to be good, no it had to be great. Lombardi's claims it is the very first pizza place in NYC, originally opened as a grocery store in little Italy in 1897, the name was licenced for pizza in 1905. Started by Gennaro Lombardi then by his son John and now run by grandson Jerry and his childhood friend John Brescio, Lombardi's is also famous for the way they cook their pies . . . with coal ovens.

The Pizza - At first bite, you say, "good," then you eat some more and you say, "different," before you know it, you've eaten 4 slices and it's the best pizza you've ever had in your life. Because it's so different than what you're used to, it does not blow you away the second you taste it, however you soon come to realize this is how all pizza should be.

The top photo in this post is a shot of a Lombardi's pie. As you can see it looks very different than the standard pizza pie. It's actually not that attractive. Looks more like something from Picasso's & Dali's Pizzeria. Don't let it bother you though, there's a very good reason it looks the way it does.

The coal oven gives the crust a perfect crisp on the outside while keeping the interior soft. The sauce is more like a sweet marinara than your standard tomato flavor. It's not overpowering though and they make sure to completely cover the crust. Nothing worse than a pizza with too little sauce.

Then we come to the creme dela creme, the cheese. This is what gives Lombardi's pizza it's unique look. The cheese is not shredded like you see on 99% of the pies. It's sliced and sliced fresh right off a new block of white mozzarella. Because slices of cheese are placed on the pie instead of shreds, it does not melt perfectly even. Don't let it throw you, the gain in taste is worth the loss in aesthetics. The mozzarella retains all its flavor because it's not sitting around shredded up in a bin. There really is zero competition for a slice of fresh mozzarella right off the block, and that's what you get with a Lombardi's pie.

You can't order slices but that's really not a problem as you'll find yourself wanting to order another pie even after you think you should be full. The slices do not weigh you down like most, they are light but still full of substance. Not a drip of oil comes off these slices and the meatball topping I had was as fresh as can be and perfectly seasoned.

Hands down the best pizza in New York, and probably anywhere else.

Rating:
Cheese - 10
Sauce - 9.5
Crust - 10
Oil - 10
Toppings - 9.5

Total - 9.8