While my daughter and I were in New York City a few months ago, we decided to take a New York City pizza tour. Our family loves pizza (who doesn’t!) and one of our favorite family traditions is homemade pizza every week. In fact, when I asked my daughter what New York City things to do she was most looking forward, a pizza tour came in at #2
After looking around at all the NYC pizza tours, we ended up settling on Scott’s Pizza Tour. You can visit their website here.
The different Scott’s pizza tours
There are 6 different Scott’s pizza tours that are open to the public. The different Scott’s pizza tours take you to different parts of New York City, and are available on different days of the week. Private tours are also available if the schedule doesn’t work out for you.
One thing to keep in mind is not all of the Scott’s pizza tours are run by the actual guy Scott who founded Scott’s pizza tours NYC. Our tour was led by a pizza aficionado named Joe, who was very entertaining as well as very knowledgeable about all things pizza.
Our Scott’s pizza tour NYC review
My daughter and I signed up for the Original Crosstown Pizza Walk pizza tour, which met on a Saturday morning at 11 a.m. Our NYC pizza tour started off in front of Gatsby’s bar and restaurant, which we soon learned was the actual site of the original Lombardi’s Pizzeria, which makes the claim as the first pizzeria in the US. We took the B/D train from our awesome night at the Sheraton Times Square, but you can also take the N/R or the 6.
We had 16 people in our group, which is, not coincidentally, also a perfect number for dividing pizza slices with!). The tickets for the Original Crosstown Pizzeria Walk were $40, and 1 child under 4 per paying adult is allowed as long as you share your pizza with them. Kennedy was the only kid in our group – everyone else were adults. After everyone arrived, Joe led us on a brief walk through Little Italy over the current site of Lombardi’s Pizzeria, the aforementioned “first pizzeria“, which was our first stop of the day.
Scott’s Pizza Tour – Lombardi’s Pizza
Each of the Scott’s Pizza Tours focuses on a different section of the city, and even on each individual Scott’s NYC Pizza tour, there are also several different pizzerias that they visit. In talking with our pizza expert Joe, there may be 30 or 40 different pizzerias that Scott’s Pizza tour NYC will visit, and so it’s fairly random which pizzeria’s you’ll end up visiting on a particular pizza tour. If you want to focus on specific pizzerias, you may need to schedule a private NYC pizza tour.
Our first stop was at Lombardi’s Pizzeria. We got there right before they opened at 11:30, and were taken past the people already lining up outside into a special side room.
On each table were plates, as well as a special Pocket Pizza Journal, which was used to document the different pizza slices we ate.
You can see I’m an open-facer (of course! The “one true way” to eat a pizza!). Joe brought out 2 different kinds of pizza at Lombardi’s and explained a bit about the history. Their pizza oven at the original location was destroyed when the subway came in, which is why they moved from their original location.
Currently Lombardi’s makes about 1500 pizzas a day on weekdays and 2500 pizzas / day from Friday to Sunday. We had an original pizza pie on our Scott’s New York City pizza tour stop as well as a “White Pie” that had ricotta and mozzarella cheese but no sauce.
Here were my notes on the first pizza in my Scott’s pizza tour pizza journal
Scott’s NYC Pizza tour 2nd stop – La Margarita
Next up on our Scott’s New York City pizza tour was La Margarita, located at 151 Ludlow Street, which was more of a “hole in the wall”. This picture of Joe showing off our pizza pretty much captures the entirety of the restaurant
My pizza journal indicates that I paired this pizza with a classy “Diet Coke” which I had brought with me from the lounge in our hotel.
My pizza was good but a little more saucy than I typically enjoy.
We did rank that as second-best of the pizzas that we ate on our Manhattan pizza tour.
Scott’s New York City Pizza Tour – Williamsburg Pizza
On our way to the last pizza stop of the day, we stopped at the Essex Street retail market, where we took a break for people to use the restroom as well as relax for a few minutes. From there, it was only a short walk to the final pizzeria on our Scott’s Pizza Tour New York City – Williamsburg Pizza on the corner of Broome and Allen streets.
We had 2 slices at Williamsburg Pizza – first was what Joe called a “Grandma Pie”, which was pretty greasy due to the olive oil on top.
It had mozzarella and parmesan cheese – I ended up with a corner piece. Our next slice on the NYC pizza tour was a more traditional piece of cheese pizza
This was actually my favorite slice of the 5 we tried on our NYC Scott’s Pizza Tour.
Our Scott’s Manhattan Pizza Tour was definitely a highlight in the weekend and well worth the $40 ticket. It ended up taking about 3 hours total and left us well positioned to several different subway stations – we ended up walking to the Delancey / Essex station and taking the F train up to continue our adventures in New York City at Central Park!
Readers: Have you ever taken a New York City pizza tour, or one in Chicago or another city? What are your recommendations?
This site is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as thepointsguy.com. This may impact how and where links appear on this site. Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers and that compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. Any opinions expressed in this post are my own, and have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by my advertising partners and I do not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers and other offers and benefits listed on this page. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more. Other links on this page may also pay me a commission - as always, thanks for your support if you use them
User Generated Content Disclosure: Points With a Crew encourages constructive discussions, comments, and questions. Responses are not provided by or commissioned by any bank advertisers. These responses have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the responsibility of the bank advertiser to respond to comments.
Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
To truly experience the tour, you need to take one that Scott leads. He is pizza crazy, in a good way! I consider Scott a friend and he’s just as funny and intense when you have pizza with him when he isn’t leading a tour. He also runs an amazing event each year which raises lots of money for charity called Slice Out Hunger. I have reviews on my site: http://michaelwtravels.boardingarea.com/2014/10/certified-pizza-awesomeness-slice-hunger-2014/
Thanks for the info MW! It looks like he only does the Pizza bus tours on Sundays as well as most private tours.