Why New Jersey is its own conversation
New Jersey has a stronger claim to pizza than almost any state in the country, and it has that claim because of two things nobody outside the region can name.
The first is the Trenton tomato pie. The cheese goes on first, directly onto the dough, and the crushed tomato goes on top of it in swirls. That inversion is not a gimmick. Putting the sauce on last means it roasts rather than steams, so it concentrates instead of going watery, and the cheese underneath browns into the crust rather than sliding off it. Thin, crisp, and sharper-tasting than a conventional pie. It has been made in and around Trenton since the 1930s.
The second is the bar pie. A small, cracker-thin, edge-to-edge pizza built to be eaten standing up in a tavern with a beer, cut in squares, with cheese taken right to the rim so the border caramelises against the pan. North Jersey has been quietly perfecting it since the 1940s and most of the country has still never had a proper one.
The cheese goes on first and the tomato goes on last. That inversion is not a gimmick, it is the whole technique.
So a New Jersey list that just names the fanciest wood-fired rooms is missing the state. The five below cover both traditions and the modern one, and each is here on evidence rather than affection.
The five
1. Razza, Jersey City
275 Grove Street.
Not merely the best in New Jersey. Third best in the United States on 50 Top Pizza's 2026 ranking, and one of the few American pizzerias that also made the New York Times national list. No other pizzeria in the state is close on the evidence.
Dan Richer treats the crust as bread rather than a plate, using flour milled locally and produce chosen by the week, and the menu moves with the season rather than sitting still. It is the rare fine-ingredient pizzeria that never tips into preciousness. If you eat at one place on this page, eat here.
2. Santillo's Brick Oven Pizza, Elizabeth
639 South Broad Street.
The purist's pick, and the one NJ.com's pizza writer, who has eaten his way through well over a thousand of the state's pizzerias, has named the best in New Jersey.
Al Santillo bakes in a brick oven his grandfather built in 1918, in a room barely bigger than the oven itself, and he will make you a pie to the recipe of a specific decade: a 1940s pie, a 1957 pie, and so on, with the cheese, sauce and thickness changed to match. It is part pizzeria and part working museum, and it is delicious rather than merely interesting, which is the hard part. Call ahead. This is not a walk-in operation.
3. De Lorenzo's Tomato Pies, Robbinsville
Robbinsville, outside Trenton.
The definitive version of the state's native style, family-run since 1947 and the reason the Trenton tomato pie survived at all.
Cheese down first, crushed tomato swirled on top, a crust thin enough to crack and strong enough to hold. The famous Hamilton Avenue original in Trenton closed years ago, but the family carried the recipe out to Robbinsville and nothing important changed. Every serious New Jersey pizza list puts a De Lorenzo's on it, and it is the one entry here that is about heritage as much as craft. The two are not in conflict.
4. Bricco Coal Fired Pizza, Haddon Township
128 Haddon Avenue.
The only New Jersey pizzeria besides Razza to make 50 Top Pizza's 2026 national ranking, placing 31st in the country, and the strongest South Jersey entry by a distance.
Coal-fired rather than wood, which gives a drier, fiercer heat and a harder char, and the result sits between Neapolitan technique and the Northeast coal-oven tradition that runs down from New Haven and Manhattan. It also solves a real problem with most state lists, which is that they are written from north of Trenton and pretend the bottom third of New Jersey does not exist.
5. Star Tavern, Orange
400 High Street.
The bar pie standard, and the reason that tradition has a benchmark at all.
A cracker-thin round, cheese carried right to the edge, cut into squares, served in a plain tavern that has made no concessions to anybody's idea of a destination restaurant. It is on essentially every credible New Jersey ranking and it has never chased any of them. Order it well done. The whole style lives or dies on the char at the rim, and asking for it is the local shibboleth.
Also worth the detour
Papa's Tomato Pies, Robbinsville, which opened in 1912 and has a genuine claim to being the oldest continuously operating family pizzeria in the country. Coniglio's Old Fashioned in Morristown, which has topped at least one serious statewide ranking. Brooklyn Square in Jackson for the upside-down pie. Talula's in Asbury Park for sourdough and a genuinely good vegetable programme. And Kinchley's in Ramsey if you want the North Jersey bar pie argument to have two sides.
How to eat them
Order the tomato pie plain the first time. Sauce, cheese, crust. If a kitchen can do that it can do anything, and if it cannot, no amount of topping will rescue it.
Ask for well done anywhere thin and crisp is the goal. Most kitchens under-bake by default because most customers complain about char, and you are not most customers.
Do not put a knife and fork near a bar pie. It is squares, it is standing up, it is with a beer, and that is the entire design brief.
And if anyone tells you the best pizza in America is in New York, point them at Jersey City and watch the argument change shape.
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