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La Margherita
La Margherita opened in Medford in 1991, and the family that runs it has built its entire identity around a specific technical claim: it was Long Island's first wood-burning brick oven pizzeria, introducing a cooking method to the region that's since become far more common but that had no established local template when La Margherita first fired up its oven more than three decades ago. That original wood-burning oven has stayed in continuous use since 1991 rather than being replaced by a more convenient modern alternative. Being first with a technique this labor-intensive carries real operational weight — a wood-burning brick oven requires constant attention to fuel, temperature, and airflow in a way gas and electric ovens simply don't, and running one as a restaurant's primary cooking method for over three decades without switching to something easier is itself a sustained commitment few competitors have matched. The 12-inch pizzas that come out of it are built simply and traditionally: fresh, house-made mozzarella, fresh tomato sauce, basil, and olive oil, letting the oven's high, wood-fed heat do most of the actual work rather than relying on elaborate toppings to carry the dish. La Margherita has stayed a family-owned restaurant across what the family itself describes as three generations, a span that covers the entire history of the wood-burning oven's operation — the same oven that opened the restaurant in 1991 has effectively been passed down and maintained across that multi-generational ownership, rather than being installed once and left to a rotating cast of hired kitchen staff. That consistency has been recognized outside the family, too — Newsday has ranked La Margherita among its Top 10 Brick Oven Pizza spots on Long Island, a distinction earned in a category the restaurant itself effectively helped establish locally more than three decades earlier. Being both the historical first mover in wood-fired pizza on the Island and a restaurant still competitive enough to make current best-of rankings is a harder combination to sustain than either distinction alone. Keeping the pizzas to a straightforward, four-ingredient build — fresh mozzarella, tomato sauce, basil, and olive oil, at a modest 12-inch size — is itself a technical choice that puts the burden squarely on the oven and the dough rather than on elaborate toppings, which is exactly the kind of unforgiving format that would expose any inconsistency in a wood-burning setup run for over three decades without a break. For a Long Island pizza list, La Margherita is the essential "the original wood-fired oven" entry — a three-generation, family-run Medford pizzeria that introduced wood-burning brick-oven pizza to Long Island in 1991 and has kept that same original oven running ever since.
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King Umberto
King Umberto opened in Elmont in 1976 on the corner of Meacham Avenue and Hempstead Turnpike — a small, cramped operation with the bar squeezed directly between the pizzeria and the dining room — before the restaurant expanded into a larger space in February 1987 that could properly accommodate its growing base of regulars. The restaurant carries the "Umberto's" name through the same extended Corteo family network responsible for the original Umberto's of New Hyde Park, though King Umberto has built its own, distinct identity and history since. That history includes a genuinely central role in one of New York pizza's more contested origin stories. After King Umberto's ownership changed hands to brothers Rosario and Sal Fuschetto, they hired two pizza makers in the 1980s, Ciro Cesarano and Angelo Giangrande, who recognized the commercial potential in a thin, rectangular, home-style pan pizza and put it on King Umberto's menu — the same style of pizza the Corteo family had been making informally at their New Hyde Park location. A regular customer, Anthony "Tippy" Nocella, suggested the pizza reminded him of something a grandmother would make rather than a restaurant, and the name stuck. In 1989, Nocella accompanied Giangrande and Fuschetto to a Delicato Foods pizza competition in Farmingdale, where, in Giangrande's own account, "my pizza was gone before the competition even started" — the moment that pushed grandma pizza into wider Long Island recognition. Ciro Cesarano's son, Giovanni Cesarano, now runs King Umberto as managing partner, having started making pizza there at 16 years old when a scheduled pizza maker didn't show up for a busy holiday shift — a start that turned into a two-decade career at the same restaurant. Giovanni has pushed King Umberto's pizza program well beyond its grandma-pizza roots, winning first place in the 2018 Caputo Cup for an award-winning gluten-free Sicilian-style pizza and second place in the 2019 Caputo Cup for a high-hydration, three-day-fermented Roman-style pizza — genuinely competitive, technically demanding styles that put King Umberto in direct conversation with serious pizza makers nationally, not just other Long Island shops. That combination — a genuine claim to the invention of an entire pizza category, plus a second-generation owner actively winning national competitions in completely different styles decades later — gives King Umberto a rare dual identity as both a historical landmark and a currently competitive kitchen. For a Long Island pizza list, King Umberto is the essential "where grandma pizza actually got its name" entry — an Elmont pizzeria run by the son of the pizza maker credited with the naming, now also a Caputo Cup award winner pushing Roman- and Sicilian-style pizza well past its own grandma-pizza legacy.
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