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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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Salvatore's Coal Oven Pizzeria
Salvatore's Coal Oven Pizzeria traces its roots to 1933, when Pat and Carmella Lancieri opened the legendary Patsy's Pizzeria on First Avenue in Harlem — one of the small handful of restaurants credited with establishing New York's original coal-oven pizza tradition. More than sixty years later, in 1996, the Lancieris' great-nephews, Fred and Marco, brought that same technique to Long Island, opening what's documented as the Island's first-ever coal-fired, brick-oven pizzeria on Shore Road in Port Washington, and naming the restaurant Salvatore's after their father. The coal-fired brick oven is the whole reason the pizzeria exists in this specific form. Coal burns significantly hotter than a standard gas or electric pizza oven, giving the crust a distinctive char and a crisp-yet-chewy structure that's difficult to replicate with other cooking methods — the same technical foundation that made Patsy's a foundational name in New York coal-oven pizza nearly a century ago. That Fred and Marco chose to import that specific technique to Long Island in 1996, rather than a more generic wood-fired or standard gas-oven approach already common in the region, reflects a direct, deliberate continuation of their family's original method rather than a loosely inspired homage. Being first matters here in a very literal sense: introducing coal-oven pizza to Long Island in 1996 meant Salvatore's had no local template to follow and no local competition executing the same technique, giving the restaurant nearly three decades to refine its specific approach to coal-fired baking largely on its own terms. Later Long Island coal-oven pizzerias that have opened in the years since have effectively been following a path Salvatore's cut first. The restaurant has stayed in the same Port Washington location for essentially its entire history, building a reputation as a foundational name in Long Island's own pizza landscape rather than remaining a footnote to its more famous Harlem lineage — regulars know Salvatore's for its own decades of consistency on Shore Road, not simply as "the Patsy's family's Long Island outpost." That's a meaningful distinction for a restaurant whose founding story is so closely tied to a more famous predecessor. For a Long Island pizza list, Salvatore's Coal Oven Pizzeria is the essential "the Island's first coal oven" entry — a Port Washington pizzeria built by the great-nephews of Patsy's Pizzeria's own founders, bringing a nearly century-old Harlem coal-oven tradition to Long Island in 1996 and refining it there for almost three decades since.
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