The Beloved Brooklyn Pizza Joint Baking Pies In A 100-Year-Old Oven

You might not have heard, but there's been a bit of chatter about New York City pizza over the last century or so. A lot of that talk mythologizes good old New York City tap water as the source of pizza supremacy, but ovens also play a much larger part than many outside the biz may realize. Coal ovens are great for creating the architecturally sound pizza triangle, with textural chew and bursts of char that might be familiar from your neighborhood slice shop; gas can fire up a similar effect, but without the burn marks or charcoal's smoky notes; and wood-burning ovens, such as the one at Best Pizza in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, make for a more pliable crust and airier perimeter than either of the others.

Best Pizza also happens to be in possession of a pizza oven that's over a century old. By the time Best Pizza opened in 2010, the building had already housed at least two establishments that fed the community for decades. The Havemeyer Street spot was equipped with a coal-burning bread oven since 1925, according to Scott Wiener from Scott's Pizza Tours. A previous pizza place built the present wood-burning pizza oven into the coal-burning bread oven in the new millennium, and that's what Best Pizza uses for its pies today.

You can find coal-, gas-, and wood-burning ovens all over New York City, although the latter is in increasingly vanishing supply due to environmental concerns. You can also fond notably older ovens, like the one at Best Pizza, including the ovens at Lucky Charlie and John's of Bleecker Street. An oven within an oven is considerably less common, and aficionados should note that Best Pizza's carries the obvious quality of wood-fired in spite of its coal exterior.

Best Pizza presently has three locations, so be sure to pick the one at 33 Havemeyer Street if you're really committed to the old timey oven bit. The cute spot is also fashioned to look a lot older than its own tenure, with a kind of retro aesthetic. It's pretty small, with just a few tables inside, so be prepared to take your whole pies and slices to go if you have to. If you do nab a seat, beer and wine are sold on-site, a relative rarity for similar operations relegated to serving soft drinks. Whole 20-inch pies run $27 for cheese and up to $32 for pies such as pepperoni. Extra toppings, including garlic, Calabrian chili, sausage, and meatballs, add to the tab. Slices are also available for around $5 a pop. Garlic knots ($4.75) and chicken Parm and eggplant heroes ($13-14) are also on the menu.