Shore, sun, sand ... slices. That’s my preferred summertime jam at the beach. More shareable than sandwiches, pizza is the only option when you have to satisfy a hangry crowd craving takeout. This also happens to be a particularly glorious time for pizza fans because the choices down the Shore between old-school standbys and newer upstarts are plentiful. Here are a dozen favorite Jersey Shore pizza destinations, from Long Beach Island to Cape May.
Bakeria 1010
Mike Fitzik has been delighting Shore pizza fans since 2017, when he started casual pop-ups out of a friend’s garage in Margate. Since then, he’s bounced around: Atlantic City, Linwood, Ocean City, Philly (briefly), and now back in Ocean City with this modest Italian-style bake shop (with a few tables for dining in) amid a strip of stores downtown. Fitzik’s airy 18-inch rounds and 17x12 rectangles — the sourdough starter, he says, was smuggled in from Naples — stay crispy amid a staggering payload of toppings. Cuts and whole pies are available, as are loaves of bread and sandwiches.
BLVD Pizza
Mike Franzoni was running an acai bowl and smoothie shop in a Long Beach Island strip mall when he started messing around with pizza. Three summers ago, he said, the slice pop-up “kind of overtook the bowls.” He flipped Incredibowls into BLVD, a takeout-only shop. The accolades have since poured in, particularly for his square Grandma pizza, which gets plum tomatoes ladled alongside the mozzarella, before it’s finished with basil, extra-virgin olive oil, and Pecorino Romano. Pizzas are available whole and by the slice. “I think there was a need for good pizza down here,” Franzoni told me as I picked up a round white pizza, whose billowy crust had just enough char atop a garlicky cheese base dotted with ricotta and a sprinkling of Pecorino Romano. He corrected himself: “There is good pizza here, just [a need for something] different — more like New York style rather than Shore style.” What’s Shore-style pizza? Franzoni smiled. “I think people know what I mean when I say that.”
Carluccio’s Coal Fired Pizza
Carlo Citera was slinging pies in a Trump Marina food court when Golden Nugget took over in 2011 and ordered the vendors to leave. Citera moved to the mainland, where he crammed a coal-fired oven and full kitchen into a shuttered Dunkin’ Donuts in Northfield — which is readily apparent from the snug counter and table seating at his always-bustling shop. The coal-oven wings, redolent of rosemary, make a terrific side to the pizzas — not only the beautifully charred 12-inch coal-fired varieties but the New York-style, Sicilians, and flatbreads displayed in the case as slices to go. Your appetizer go-to could be a coal-fired Bufalina (a veritable salad on a pizza with ricotta, basil, truffle oil, pesto, arugula, tomatoes, prosciutto, and buffalo mozzarella), followed by a juicy Grandma, which Guy Fieri raved about a decade ago on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.
Lucky Bones Backwater Grille
There’s a vague seafaring feel to this cozy, roadhouse-style bar-restaurant on the main drag into Cape May, whose menu ably covers those who might want to share one of 12 brick-oven pizzas while someone else goes the sandwich-salad-entree route. Or, perhaps, a late breakfast, when the oven turns out a Croque Madame pie with Locatelli and Gruyère cheeses, soppressata, bacon, and sunny-side-up egg. The clam pizza, reminiscent of the New Haven specialty, includes chopped garlic, fresh oregano, and local clams, all cloaked in a heavy layer of mozzarella and Parmesan. Whole pies only.
Manco & Manco Pizza
Manco’s — which was Mack & Manco from its 1956 founding until its sale in 2011 — sells the Ocean City boardwalk pizza that many grew up on: light-crusted, gently baked, 18-inch rounds. Maybe not your favorite slice of all time, but simple, tasty, and certainly one you’d share with friends. But not a seagull — one learns at a young age to guard your slice while walking the boardwalk. Part of Manco’s appeal is the floor show: Watch the pizzaiolo stretch and toss the doughs cartoonishly high and then plop them down on the counter for their dusting of cheese and swirls of marinara from the sauce hose before they’re slid into a revolving oven. Manco’s has three spots on Ocean City’s boardwalk (8th, 9th, and 12th Streets), plus one in Somers Point and an outpost at Citizens Bank Park. One note for 2025: A whole plain pie is $25.75 and most are $39.75 — among the pricier pizzas around.
Poppi’s Brick Oven Pizza
The Jersey Shore is a land of deck ovens, turning out N.Y.-style pies. Props to Brendan Sciarra, who converted a Wildwood pizzeria into this family-friendly-but-fine-for-date-night destination a decade ago, choosing a wood-fired brick oven for Neapolitan-style pizzas. The whole 12-inchers, with their pillowy, smoky crusts, share the menu with starters, sandwiches, and dinnertime entrees. The fig pie is a favorite: mozzarella, gorgonzola, and Parmesan, chopped figs, sautéed onions, and extra-virgin olive oil, capped with sliced prosciutto di Parma. It’s BYOB, though wines from Hawk Haven Vineyard are available.
Saltwater
MY WORD, THIS PLACE IS LOUD. If you don’t head to David and Lori Salvo’s high-energy Margate bistro for spritzes and martinis and a plate of the gigantic, hand-rolled ricotta gnocchi or maybe a cutlet, you’re there for the crusty, puffy-crusted rectangles and rounds that even caught critic Craig LaBan’s fancy. The reds get a simple sauce that’s little more than hand-crushed tomatoes and oregano with flourishes of basil, while the whites come up under a zesty blend of Pecorino and mozzarella. Sidewalk seating offers a respite from the din. Whole pies only.
Seven Mile Pies
You could probably eat every day at this low-key parlor, tucked into a mini-mall in Stone Harbor’s downtown, and not get bored. The varieties seem endless — mac and cheese! honey hot chicken! bang-bang shrimp! — and the thin crusts stand up well to the kitchen’s heavy hand. It’s sold by the slice or pie. There’s an indoor dining room festooned with movie posters as well as an umbrellaed picnic setup outside shared by other shops in the Walk at Harbor Square. Don’t miss the loaded fries.
Squares & Fare
Dominic Russo’s social-media following clamored for the pizza pop-ups he ran out of his kitchen. Last year, he opened a restaurant in a former Laundromat across from Charlie’s in Somers Point — a neat, tiled workroom with no sign outside (only a subtle “S&F” on a sticker on the front door jamb) and a double oven to bake his pneumatically airy, thick-crusted red rectangles, whose edges get those toasty, cheesy wisps known as “frico.” Demand is still high, and sellouts are frequent. I scored a vodka pie ($29.75 but enough to feed at least three) as a walk-in shortly after the 3 p.m. opening, but I would advise ordering online. There are five tables for two, so takeaway is best. Whole pies only.
Tony Boloney’s
After Mike Hauke taught himself to make mozzarella 15 years ago, he set out on a mission to put it on as many pizza varieties as he could at his funky, graffiti-covered shop in a weathered house near the Inlet in Atlantic City. Tony Boloney’s motto seems to be “more is more,” whether it’s flavor combos or portion sizes. The K-Pop Mic Drop pizza starts with a black sesame seed crust and gets Korean fire chicken (gochujang buldak), scallions, and cheeses; it’s served with chopsticks. There’s a pizza whose name, referring to someone who’s highly inebriated, I cannot print. It has beer-battered chicken or cauliflower, honey stout barbecue sauce, aged mozzarella, and sharp cheddar. Some are barely pizzas at all. The Taco Taco Taco is a collection of tacos encircling a mound of guacamole. The sandwiches, some topped with Hauke’s Mad Mutz mozzarella sticks, are similarly over the top. Let’s talk about the Swine Fighter, whose pepperoni gets a zap under the broiler before the pizzaiolo adds an obscene amount of the charred cups onto a red cheese pie — maybe three or four times the usual pepp load. But wait, there’s more: The resulting grease from the pepperoni pan is mixed with mayo to create a sauce that’s squirted on top. Stent sold separately. Pizzas are available whole and by the slice.
Tony’s Baltimore Grill
Tony’s Baltimore Grill — its seafood supplier was in Baltimore when it opened nearly 100 years ago — has withstood time, trends, disco, and casino gambling, still basking moodily in its neon glow of nostalgia and kitsch. I’ve been coming here since 1965, when it relocated to what is now the shadow of the Tropicana. You should order a crispy, thin-crusted 12-inch bar pizza — whole pies only — to accompany your red-sauce Italian favorites. The Damon Tyner, devised by a former local judge, gets you a half-pepperoni, half-sausage, amped by chopped hot peppers sprinkled throughout. The adjacent bar is open 24 hours, and the kitchen is open till 2 a.m. weeknights and 3 a.m. weekends.
Zio Niccolo Pizza
It’s $5.45 for a slice of pepperoni? You have to know that at Zio Niccolo, it’s crispy and thin-crusted with minimal flop, and it’s cut from a 22-inch pie. Did someone say “Π”? My pizza math tells me that the slices at Nicholas Sidoti’s pizzeria on the promenade in Sea Isle are 67% larger than the 18-inchers you see all over. (Sidoti’s whole pies are 16-inchers.) Most customers, including beachgoers who get delivery to their umbrellas, stick with the plain and pepperoni, though the house special Zio Niccolo, with its chunky San Marzano sauce, fresh mozz, and basil, is a good bet. Whole pies and slices are available, as are 10-inch gluten-free crusts.
Bakeria 1010
Mike Fitzik has been delighting Shore pizza fans since 2017, when he started casual pop-ups out of a friend’s garage in Margate. Since then, he’s bounced around: Atlantic City, Linwood, Ocean City, Philly (briefly), and now back in Ocean City with this modest Italian-style bake shop (with a few tables for dining in) amid a strip of stores downtown. Fitzik’s airy 18-inch rounds and 17x12 rectangles — the sourdough starter, he says, was smuggled in from Naples — stay crispy amid a staggering payload of toppings. Cuts and whole pies are available, as are loaves of bread and sandwiches.
BLVD Pizza
Mike Franzoni was running an acai bowl and smoothie shop in a Long Beach Island strip mall when he started messing around with pizza. Three summers ago, he said, the slice pop-up “kind of overtook the bowls.” He flipped Incredibowls into BLVD, a takeout-only shop. The accolades have since poured in, particularly for his square Grandma pizza, which gets plum tomatoes ladled alongside the mozzarella, before it’s finished with basil, extra-virgin olive oil, and Pecorino Romano. Pizzas are available whole and by the slice. “I think there was a need for good pizza down here,” Franzoni told me as I picked up a round white pizza, whose billowy crust had just enough char atop a garlicky cheese base dotted with ricotta and a sprinkling of Pecorino Romano. He corrected himself: “There is good pizza here, just [a need for something] different — more like New York style rather than Shore style.” What’s Shore-style pizza? Franzoni smiled. “I think people know what I mean when I say that.”
Carluccio’s Coal Fired Pizza
Carlo Citera was slinging pies in a Trump Marina food court when Golden Nugget took over in 2011 and ordered the vendors to leave. Citera moved to the mainland, where he crammed a coal-fired oven and full kitchen into a shuttered Dunkin’ Donuts in Northfield — which is readily apparent from the snug counter and table seating at his always-bustling shop. The coal-oven wings, redolent of rosemary, make a terrific side to the pizzas — not only the beautifully charred 12-inch coal-fired varieties but the New York-style, Sicilians, and flatbreads displayed in the case as slices to go. Your appetizer go-to could be a coal-fired Bufalina (a veritable salad on a pizza with ricotta, basil, truffle oil, pesto, arugula, tomatoes, prosciutto, and buffalo mozzarella), followed by a juicy Grandma, which Guy Fieri raved about a decade ago on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.
Lucky Bones Backwater Grille
There’s a vague seafaring feel to this cozy, roadhouse-style bar-restaurant on the main drag into Cape May, whose menu ably covers those who might want to share one of 12 brick-oven pizzas while someone else goes the sandwich-salad-entree route. Or, perhaps, a late breakfast, when the oven turns out a Croque Madame pie with Locatelli and Gruyère cheeses, soppressata, bacon, and sunny-side-up egg. The clam pizza, reminiscent of the New Haven specialty, includes chopped garlic, fresh oregano, and local clams, all cloaked in a heavy layer of mozzarella and Parmesan. Whole pies only.
Manco & Manco Pizza
Manco’s — which was Mack & Manco from its 1956 founding until its sale in 2011 — sells the Ocean City boardwalk pizza that many grew up on: light-crusted, gently baked, 18-inch rounds. Maybe not your favorite slice of all time, but simple, tasty, and certainly one you’d share with friends. But not a seagull — one learns at a young age to guard your slice while walking the boardwalk. Part of Manco’s appeal is the floor show: Watch the pizzaiolo stretch and toss the doughs cartoonishly high and then plop them down on the counter for their dusting of cheese and swirls of marinara from the sauce hose before they’re slid into a revolving oven. Manco’s has three spots on Ocean City’s boardwalk (8th, 9th, and 12th Streets), plus one in Somers Point and an outpost at Citizens Bank Park. One note for 2025: A whole plain pie is $25.75 and most are $39.75 — among the pricier pizzas around.
Poppi’s Brick Oven Pizza
The Jersey Shore is a land of deck ovens, turning out N.Y.-style pies. Props to Brendan Sciarra, who converted a Wildwood pizzeria into this family-friendly-but-fine-for-date-night destination a decade ago, choosing a wood-fired brick oven for Neapolitan-style pizzas. The whole 12-inchers, with their pillowy, smoky crusts, share the menu with starters, sandwiches, and dinnertime entrees. The fig pie is a favorite: mozzarella, gorgonzola, and Parmesan, chopped figs, sautéed onions, and extra-virgin olive oil, capped with sliced prosciutto di Parma. It’s BYOB, though wines from Hawk Haven Vineyard are available.
Saltwater
MY WORD, THIS PLACE IS LOUD. If you don’t head to David and Lori Salvo’s high-energy Margate bistro for spritzes and martinis and a plate of the gigantic, hand-rolled ricotta gnocchi or maybe a cutlet, you’re there for the crusty, puffy-crusted rectangles and rounds that even caught critic Craig LaBan’s fancy. The reds get a simple sauce that’s little more than hand-crushed tomatoes and oregano with flourishes of basil, while the whites come up under a zesty blend of Pecorino and mozzarella. Sidewalk seating offers a respite from the din. Whole pies only.
Seven Mile Pies
You could probably eat every day at this low-key parlor, tucked into a mini-mall in Stone Harbor’s downtown, and not get bored. The varieties seem endless — mac and cheese! honey hot chicken! bang-bang shrimp! — and the thin crusts stand up well to the kitchen’s heavy hand. It’s sold by the slice or pie. There’s an indoor dining room festooned with movie posters as well as an umbrellaed picnic setup outside shared by other shops in the Walk at Harbor Square. Don’t miss the loaded fries.
Squares & Fare
Dominic Russo’s social-media following clamored for the pizza pop-ups he ran out of his kitchen. Last year, he opened a restaurant in a former Laundromat across from Charlie’s in Somers Point — a neat, tiled workroom with no sign outside (only a subtle “S&F” on a sticker on the front door jamb) and a double oven to bake his pneumatically airy, thick-crusted red rectangles, whose edges get those toasty, cheesy wisps known as “frico.” Demand is still high, and sellouts are frequent. I scored a vodka pie ($29.75 but enough to feed at least three) as a walk-in shortly after the 3 p.m. opening, but I would advise ordering online. There are five tables for two, so takeaway is best. Whole pies only.
Tony Boloney’s
After Mike Hauke taught himself to make mozzarella 15 years ago, he set out on a mission to put it on as many pizza varieties as he could at his funky, graffiti-covered shop in a weathered house near the Inlet in Atlantic City. Tony Boloney’s motto seems to be “more is more,” whether it’s flavor combos or portion sizes. The K-Pop Mic Drop pizza starts with a black sesame seed crust and gets Korean fire chicken (gochujang buldak), scallions, and cheeses; it’s served with chopsticks. There’s a pizza whose name, referring to someone who’s highly inebriated, I cannot print. It has beer-battered chicken or cauliflower, honey stout barbecue sauce, aged mozzarella, and sharp cheddar. Some are barely pizzas at all. The Taco Taco Taco is a collection of tacos encircling a mound of guacamole. The sandwiches, some topped with Hauke’s Mad Mutz mozzarella sticks, are similarly over the top. Let’s talk about the Swine Fighter, whose pepperoni gets a zap under the broiler before the pizzaiolo adds an obscene amount of the charred cups onto a red cheese pie — maybe three or four times the usual pepp load. But wait, there’s more: The resulting grease from the pepperoni pan is mixed with mayo to create a sauce that’s squirted on top. Stent sold separately. Pizzas are available whole and by the slice.
Tony’s Baltimore Grill
Tony’s Baltimore Grill — its seafood supplier was in Baltimore when it opened nearly 100 years ago — has withstood time, trends, disco, and casino gambling, still basking moodily in its neon glow of nostalgia and kitsch. I’ve been coming here since 1965, when it relocated to what is now the shadow of the Tropicana. You should order a crispy, thin-crusted 12-inch bar pizza — whole pies only — to accompany your red-sauce Italian favorites. The Damon Tyner, devised by a former local judge, gets you a half-pepperoni, half-sausage, amped by chopped hot peppers sprinkled throughout. The adjacent bar is open 24 hours, and the kitchen is open till 2 a.m. weeknights and 3 a.m. weekends.
Zio Niccolo Pizza
It’s $5.45 for a slice of pepperoni? You have to know that at Zio Niccolo, it’s crispy and thin-crusted with minimal flop, and it’s cut from a 22-inch pie. Did someone say “Π”? My pizza math tells me that the slices at Nicholas Sidoti’s pizzeria on the promenade in Sea Isle are 67% larger than the 18-inchers you see all over. (Sidoti’s whole pies are 16-inchers.) Most customers, including beachgoers who get delivery to their umbrellas, stick with the plain and pepperoni, though the house special Zio Niccolo, with its chunky San Marzano sauce, fresh mozz, and basil, is a good bet. Whole pies and slices are available, as are 10-inch gluten-free crusts.