What makes a great pizza? Three things: fresh, quality ingredients, know-how, and a great oven.

Ingredients: Grimaldi's pizzas are made with fresh mozzarella, tomato, basil, and dough made daily. The toppings are the best and freshest available - from the finest sweet italian sausage to the most flavorful red peppers masterfully roasted in Grimaldi's coal-brick ovens.

Know-how: Grimaldi's has the finest pizza pedigree in America. Patsy Grimaldi has perfected the art of pizza-making that he learned at the original Patsy's Pizzeria in Harlem during its golden days. Patsy Grimaldi started making pies at his uncle Patsy Lancieri's restaurant in 1941 at the age of 10.

In recent years, the original Patsy's in Harlem has been sold off to a corporation and franchised, leading Patsy Grimaldi to change the name of his restaurant (which was originally named "Patsy's Pizzeria" as well) to "Grimaldi's". According to Eric Asimov of the New York Times, "If the mantle of Patsy Lancieri were awarded on quality alone, Grimaldi's...would win hands down." And where did Patsy Lancieri earn his mantle? He, along with legendary pizza makers John Sasso of John's and Anthony (Totonno) Pero of Totonno's, are all said to have learned their craft from Gennaro Lombardi, proprietor of the original Lombardi's, America's first pizzeria.

The Oven: If you've ever wondered why three legendary NY pizzerias - John's in Greenwich Village, Patsy's in Harlem, and Totonno's in Coney Island - have been unable to successfully recreate their signature pies in their new restaurants in Manhattan, the first place to look is at their ovens.

To have a great, traditional NY pizza, you need to have a great coal-fired brick oven. Modern gas and electric ovens can't produce the extreme heat (850F) and impart the crust with the right amount of crispiness and smokiness that a coal brick oven can. The problem is that it is illegal to build new coal brick ovens in Manhattan - and thus the attempts to make Manhattan clones fail.

Patsy Grimaldi avoided this problem by building his first restaurant in Brooklyn, right by the waterfront beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. As Grimaldi's became the new bastion of traditional NY pizza, with mobs of locals, star athletes, and movie stars lining the block to get in, it became clear that there was room for expansion. Rather than sell-out on the reputation that Grimaldi's had earned by building an inferior sister restaurant in Manhattan, they opened their second restaurant across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey. In fact, both Grimaldi's brick ovens were built by the same man, Sean McHugh, who now runs the Hoboken location.

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