Pete's Pizzeria Napoletana

Fourth-generation restaurateur Pete Thirstino (Pete's Downtown) started making pizzas when he was 13, working in his grandfather's Brooklyn Navy Yard restaurant and churning out Neapolitan pies from Gramps' coal oven. "We got away from pizza," he says, of family's restaurant projects since, but Thirstino is ready to cook up those pies again at his new Neapolitan pizza joint in Park Slope. He's making them the traditional way here, with San Marzano tomatoes and double-zero flour, in varieties like margherita, and portobello and cremini mushrooms. (Thirstino also makes all his mozzarella in-house.) The pies pop out of a wood-burning oven that Thirstino and his crew made from the ground up, brick by brick, to be customized to this space. The pizzas aren't the only ode to Thirstino's grandfather: The signage was modeled after Gramps' restaurant, and even the phone number is exactly the same.

See more: Park Slope restaurants, Italian restaurants, Pizza restaurants