December 13th, 2015
Staten Island, NY
We’ve been in NJ for a couple of years now, and we’ve been all around New York City, except for Staten Island. We were talking on our drive out to Lee’s Tavern about this, and we both were wondering what we could do on Staten Island aside from eat pizza. (We couldn’t come up with anything, but we’d be interested to know if you have any fun things to do on Staten Island the next time we go there for pizza.)
Lee’s Tavern is one of two pizza places on Staten Island that made the 2015 list. It’s primarily known as a family and community bar, although the pizza always gets mentioned in “Best of NYC” lists. I don’t think I’d call it one of the best in NYC, although Eric has ranked this higher on his list.
The consensus is to order the clam or the pepperoni here so we ended up trying the white clam and then also a veggie to round it out. The crust is pretty thin, kind of similar to Rubirosa. The toppings were OK. The veggies weren’t cut very small, so it was a little difficult to eat. As for the clam, well, if you’ve tried a New Haven clam pie, you won’t be very impressed. We were happy to try something different, though.
Another thing that didn’t sell us here was the service. If you are a regular here or part of the town, you may be actually greeted and seated when you walk in. We walked in, waited a bit for them to even notice that we were looking for a table, and then waited way too long to get our pizza. It wasn’t even that it was crowded (you can see behind me in the photo that there are empty tables!) The family next to us offered to sell us one of their slices, for $10. We must have looked extra hungry.
To visit:
Lee’s Tavern
60 Hancock Street
Staten Island, NY 10305
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