Head to this venerable Bronx Italian restaurant for gracefully topped thin-crust pizzas. It’s a true neighborhood spot, around since 1959, and has since snagged headlines for its white pizza and sausage-topped pie — two customer favorites. Louie & Ernie’s serves both slices and pies, as well as $6.50 calzones.
Ralph Cuomo opened the first Ray's Pizza, at 27 Prince Street in Little Italy, in 1959, named after his nickname "Raffie". In the 1960s he briefly owned a second Ray's Pizza, but sold it to Rosolino Mangano in 1964. Mangano kept the name and later claimed that his was the first. In 1973, Mario Di Rienzo named his new pizzeria Ray's Pizza (which is now closed) after, he claimed, the nickname for his family in Italy. Also that year, Joseph Bari purchased a pizzeria from Mangano and renamed it, and several others, as Ray Bari Pizza. By 1991, dozens of pizzerias in New York City had "Ray's" in their name, as well as those in other American states.
American pizza in general, and New York in particular, owes a lot to Lombardi's Pizza, first opened in 1905 in Little Italy, Manhattan. Gennaro Lombardi was granted the first mercantile license to sell pizza in New York. Lombardi's is credited with the revolutionary use of the coal oven, and set the standard for selling pizza by the pie rather than the slice.