With an outrageous amount of hype surrounding this pizzeria, I came into the review with some of the highest hopes and loftiest expectations I’ve ever had. Established in 1973, Luigi’s is celebrating their 50th anniversary, remaining a favorite of loyal locals and revered by some of the top pizzaiolos in New York. An old school, cash only joint, they serve huge slices and reasonably priced pies for around $20 (a bargain in NYC). Luigi’s quintessential slice is to Brooklyn as Joe’s quintessential slice is to Manhattan. Many believe this is the best pizza in BK and all of NYC, top-ranked among standard cheese pies. Maybe my expectations were too high but in my estimation, this is a regular, traditional, simple, very solid, fairly basic, slightly above average, somewhat standard, New York football pizza. Not one single element of this pie is exceptional. Furthermore, this pizza tastes like it was premade hours in advance and reheated, with a very stale and dry taste & texture. The dough is firm and marginally crispy with a decent undercarriage but lacks any real char. Missing that “made with NYC water” signature taste, the dough is rather bland for Brooklyn. The crust provides decent crunch but seems dried out and stale, possibly from a reheat. The cheese is a tad-too-thick shredded mozzarella blend with an uneventfully generic and partly pedestrian flavor. The sauce is surprisingly simple and boringly banal. Not particularly sweet and not especially tangy, the sauce has no pop, lacking pizzazz, falling flat. There aren’t any spices or elements in the sauce to distinguish its flavor from run-of-the-mill pizzas. There was nothing about this pie that tickled my taste buds; I felt no tingle, just kind of numb. I expected an elite Hall of Fame pizza, hoping for Mickey Mantle but I got Mickey Rivers. If you put this pie in a pizza lineup with 9 other standard-looking NYC pizzas, I’m not sure you would be able to differentiate Luigi’s from the other typical football pizzas in a taste test. Don’t get me wrong, this is still very good pizza; but it fell short for me especially by Brooklyn & New York City pizza standards. Based on the extraordinarily high scores, I’m shocked, astonished and overall disappointed at how unspectacular and mostly middle of the road this overrated pizza wound up being. Among all pies everywhere, this is quality pizza; but I assure you, it’s not the best in New York or even Brooklyn.
