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Blue Moon
Blue Moon traces its family recipe back more than 50 years in its current Rockville Centre storefront, and the family itself further back still — to a first pizzeria Cosimo Montemurro opened generations earlier, a lineage the family now describes as reaching back roughly 80 years in total. Today the restaurant is run by Cosimo's grandson, Raymond Montemurro, who opened the current Blue Moon location specifically to continue his grandfather's tradition in a stylish, comfortable neighborhood setting rather than simply inheriting an existing building unchanged. The pizza itself comes out of a genuine coal-burning oven, sending out well-blistered pies loaded with classic toppings — sausage, meatballs, and the rest of a traditional Italian-American pizzeria's repertoire — cooked at the high, intense heat coal ovens are specifically valued for. That coal-fired method places Blue Moon among a small group of Long Island pizzerias still committed to the more labor-intensive, higher-maintenance coal-burning approach rather than the gas or electric ovens most competitors have long since switched to for convenience. Raymond Montemurro has described the restaurant's food as steeped in tradition "with a slight modern twist" — a framing that acknowledges Blue Moon isn't simply freezing his grandfather's original recipes in place, but updating them carefully enough to stay relevant to contemporary diners without abandoning the coal-oven technique and family recipes that define the restaurant's identity. That balance between inherited technique and gradual modernization is part of what's let Blue Moon stay a genuine multi-generational business rather than either stagnating or losing its identity to a full modern rebrand. Rockville Centre's Park Avenue corridor has real pizza competition of its own — several other well-regarded pizzerias operate within walking distance — which has kept Blue Moon's standards under constant local pressure to perform, even with five decades of history behind it. That the Montemurro family has held its position in that competitive stretch across three generations, through a coal-oven method that takes real skill and maintenance to run well, speaks to a level of consistency that newer entrants into the neighborhood have had to measure themselves against. The roughly 80-year total family lineage, running from Cosimo Montemurro's original pizzeria down through his grandson Raymond, means Blue Moon's current owner grew up around the coal-oven technique rather than learning it as an adopted trade — a meaningfully different foundation than a chef-owner who trained elsewhere and later decided to open a pizzeria of his own. For a Long Island pizza list, Blue Moon is the essential "three generations, one coal oven" entry — a Rockville Centre pizzeria tracing back roughly 80 years through the Montemurro family, still baking classic, well-blistered pies in a genuine coal-burning oven under the grandson of the family's founding pizzaiolo.
VS
Amore Pizzeria
Richard Graffeo, a Brooklyn native, spent years working at four separate pizza places alongside his uncle across Long Island before deciding it was time to put down roots of his own. He bought a storefront in Bay Shore on December 13, 1991, and exactly one month later, on January 13, 1992, opened it as Amore Pizzeria — a name chosen as a direct nod to his uncle's own restaurants, which had operated under the name "Pizzeria Amore." The recipe Graffeo brought to Union Boulevard has stayed essentially unchanged since that January 1992 opening — a genuinely rare claim for a pizzeria to make honestly after more than three decades in business, where recipe drift, cost-cutting substitutions, and ownership changes tend to erode even well-loved originals over time. Graffeo opened Amore with his wife and two young sons at his side, and the restaurant has stayed a family operation through the decades since, which is a meaningful part of why the recipe has held steady rather than been quietly adjusted for margin. Local coverage has tracked that consistency at genuine milestones rather than treating it as a one-time story — Greater Long Island profiled the restaurant's 25th anniversary in Bay Shore, and Patch later covered its 31st year in business under the headline "Everything We Had," a phrase that captures how directly Graffeo has described his own investment in the restaurant since buying that storefront in 1991. Few Long Island pizzerias get two separate rounds of anniversary press coverage from local outlets years apart, and fewer still earn it for staying essentially the same restaurant throughout. That the pizza recipe traces to Graffeo's own apprenticeship years working alongside his uncle, rather than to formal culinary training or a franchise system, gives Amore a direct, single-family lineage that's stayed intact since before the restaurant even had its own address — Graffeo learned the technique at his uncle's pizzerias first, and only opened his own place once he'd fully internalized it, rather than improvising a recipe from scratch on day one. The exact one-month gap between buying the storefront in December 1991 and opening in January 1992 suggests a founder who moved decisively once he'd made the decision to go out on his own, after years of working at someone else's restaurants first — a pattern of patient apprenticeship followed by a fast, committed launch that's held up as the defining shape of Graffeo's whole career in the business. For a Long Island pizza list, Amore Pizzeria is the essential "unchanged recipe, three-plus decades running" entry — a Bay Shore pizzeria Richard Graffeo opened in January 1992 with a recipe learned directly from his uncle's own pizzerias, still run by the same family and still, by the restaurant's own account, unchanged since it opened.
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