Koko Lists
Start a new list
Log in
Sign up
← New random battle
Koko Battle
Tap your pick.
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.
VS
Umberto's of New Hyde Park
Umberto Corteo was born in the village of Monte di Procida, near Naples, into a family of thirteen children who worked their father's farm to help feed the household. After immigrating to America as a teenager and working restaurant kitchens in Brooklyn to save capital, Umberto and his younger brother Joe pooled their earnings and opened the original Umberto's of New Hyde Park in 1965 — the pizzeria that's since grown into a two-story Tuscan-style restaurant with a full-service café, formal dining room, and banquet facilities drawing tens of thousands of guests a year. The restaurant's most significant contribution to New York food history has nothing to do with its dining room, however — it's the origin of grandma pizza. According to food historian Barry Popik's documented account, Umberto would ask his brother Carlo, who joined the business in 1970, to make him "that pizza that Mama used to make" back in Italy — a home-style, thin, rectangular pan pizza that Umberto initially resisted putting on the actual menu even as friends who tried it urged him to. That off-menu family pizza eventually made its way, through the extended Corteo family network, to a satellite location the family had opened in Elmont; after that location was sold in 1976, two pizza makers hired by its new owners recognized the dish's potential and began serving it under the name a regular customer suggested — "grandma," because it reminded him more of a grandmother's cooking than a restaurant pizza. The dish then spread across Long Island, Queens, and Brooklyn from that shared origin point, with Umberto's New Hyde Park location remaining the place most identified with where the family recipe began. That disputed, multi-generational origin story — Umberto's the birthplace of the actual recipe, a related family restaurant the place where it first got a name and a menu listing — is itself part of what makes the pizza's history worth knowing rather than a simple, tidy founding myth. The restaurant has since expanded to five Long Island locations while keeping the original New Hyde Park address as its flagship, still serving the same square, thin-crusted pie that eventually gave an entire category of American pizza its name. For a Long Island pizza list, Umberto's of New Hyde Park is the essential "birthplace of grandma pizza" entry — a 1965 Corteo family pizzeria whose off-menu, mother's-recipe pan pizza became, through a genuinely tangled family history, the origin point of one of New York's most widely imitated pizza styles.
Next battle
Full comparison
About La Margherita
About Umberto's of New Hyde Park
Popular Battles
1984 vs. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
1 votes
Friends vs. Curb Your Enthusiasm
1 votes
Ideogram vs. Sora
1 votes
Navy Pier vs. Bishop Museum
1 votes
Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree vs. Skittles
1 votes
George Carlin vs. Oprah Winfrey
1 votes
