December 27th, 2015
Staten Island, NY
The 2015 list had two pizza places located out on Staten Island. We hit the first one early on in our journey, since it is much quicker to drive into Staten Island from NJ than driving out to Brooklyn or Queens. Denino’s is the second pizzeria on the list, and it is ranked slightly higher, at #35.
Denino’s originally opened as a tavern on Staten Island in the late 1930’s, and started making pizzas in 1951. We heard the sausage here was worth trying, so we split a pie with half sausage, half plain. The sauce is a bit sweeter than some of the other NYC pies, and the crust is a bit softer than your typical brick oven.
After trying out these two Staten Island pizzerias, we are definitely able to discriminate a Staten Island pie from a NY slice. We can understand why people like this pizza if they grow up with it, but something about it seemed to be lacking compared to your typical NY-style pie.
We thought maybe it was the crust, which is a different texture and slightly crispier, or the sauce, which was a tad too sweet for us, or possibly the cheese, which wasn’t actually very flavorful. We did think it had the edge over Lee’s Tavern, though. Neither one of us ranked it very high on our personal lists, but so far it is the best Staten Island pizza we’ve had.
Anyone else know any other places on Staten Island that we should hit? We’d be interested in comparing a few more.
To visit:
Denino’s
524 Port Richmond Ave
Staten Island, NY 10302
Published by