Even Google doesn’t know how many pizzerias there are in New York, but various uninformed estimates place the number between 1,000 and 32,000. What we do know is that it seems there’s a pizza joint on every block and many of them sell slices to go. That fits with the NYC culture of literally eating on the run, or on the walk. New Yorkers seem to be constantly eating in public. But we digress.

Surrounded by pizza from the moment we arrived in New York, we immediately gave up on trying to find the “best” pizza in the city. We were just happy to visit what might be the oldest pizzeria in New York. At least that’s what Lombardi’s claims. It was established in 1905.

Lombardi’s (32 Spring Street, New York; 212-941-7994; firstpizza.com) even looks like the template for an American pizza joint. It has the red-and-white checkerboard tablecloths, brick walls, and a soundtrack that could have been lifted from any number of gangster films. A steady diet of long-ago lounge singers is interspersed with 1950s band takes on the tarantella. All that’s missing is Talia Shire in a wedding dress.

What’s also missing is the other half of the restaurant. During cutbacks in the pandemic, Lombardi’s let go of the lease next door at 30 Spring Street, which was then demolished. Somewhere deep in the rubble was a historic coal-fired oven built into the foundation. After more than a century of cooking pizza in a coal-fired oven, Lombardi’s is now cooking with gas.

But that doesn’t really diminish the pizza. We immediately indulged in nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake and ordered a classic 12-inch Margarita pizza to share with two glasses of Chianti. The wine didn’t come in a straw-covered bottle. That would have been a little too récherché. But it had all the hallmarks of very rustic but authentic Italian Chianti.

The pizza, too, was the Platonic ideal of a New York pizza. The crust was crisp at the edges, a little leathery on the bottom. The tomato and mozzarella were both so generous that they would have made a Neapolitan pizzaiolo cry heresy. But this is Gotham, not Naples. Sprinkled with a little Romano and a few pinches of red pepper flakes, it was New York perfect.