Denino’s Pizzeria & Tavern

The Tavern Pie and What It Means

In New York pizza, the tavern-style pie occupies a specific cultural position. Thinner than a standard New York slice, cut into squares, and built for communal sharing at a table rather than folded in transit, it traces its roots to the borough pizzerias and neighborhood bars of the mid-twentieth century. Staten Island kept that tradition alive long after other boroughs moved on to other formats, and Denino's Pizzeria & Tavern at 524 Port Richmond Ave is among the clearest expressions of it still operating today.

Port Richmond itself is a working-class neighborhood with a long Italian-American history, and the strip along Port Richmond Avenue retains the kind of character that newer dining corridors in Brooklyn or Manhattan have largely engineered out of existence. Approaching Denino's, there is no signage designed for Instagram, no architectural gesture toward the premium dining tier. What you get instead is a building that looks exactly like a place that has been feeding the same neighborhood since 1937 — because it has.

Where Denino's Sits in the New York Pizza Conversation

New York pizza in 2024 operates across a wide range of formats, price points, and borough allegiances. At one end, coal-oven Neapolitan-influenced spots like Angelo's Coal Oven Pizza and Don Antonio compete on technique and toppings sourced from Campania. At the other end, slice counters like Artichoke Basille's have built citywide recognition on a single signature slice. Leading Pizza in Williamsburg and Emmy Squared have moved the Detroit square into the mainstream conversation.

Denino's competes with none of these on their own terms. Its competitive set is the handful of multi-decade Staten Island pizzerias that predate the current craft-pizza era entirely — places where the product is not a reinterpretation of tradition but the tradition itself. That positioning earned it a spot on the Opinionated About Dining Cheap Eats in North America list at rank 309 in 2024, following a Recommended listing in 2023. OAD's cheap eats rankings are crowd-sourced from a community of serious food travelers, which means the recognition comes from people who eat extensively and compare carefully. Two consecutive appearances signals sustained quality, not a single strong season.

For context, Denino's sits in a different category to New York's multi-Michelin constellation. Le Bernardin, Eleven Madison Park, Masa, and Per Se operate at $$$$ price points where a single dinner for two can exceed $500. Denino's is a cheap-eats institution, and the OAD ranking places it in that tier with precision. The comparison matters because the dining occasion at Denino's is entirely different from what those rooms offer , and that difference is part of the appeal.

The Occasion This Place Is Built For

Milestone dining in New York has a tendency to drift toward the tasting-menu tier. Birthdays, anniversaries, and family gatherings get routed toward reservation-heavy rooms where a prix-fixe structure controls the pace of the evening. Denino's offers a different model for occasion dining, one that is common in Italian-American communities and increasingly rare in a city where neighborhood institutions face constant commercial pressure.

The tavern format means tables are sized for groups. Pies arrive whole and are shared. The atmosphere at a place like this is determined by the room filling up with regulars and families rather than by a designed ambient program. For a certain kind of milestone , a multi-generational birthday, a neighborhood reunion, a celebration that needs warmth over formality , the tavern-pie format at a decades-old institution does something a tasting menu cannot replicate.

Chef Carla Denino leads the kitchen, and the continuity that name represents is part of what makes the occasion feel grounded. Family-run pizzerias at this age are uncommon; most either close, change hands, or evolve into something that bears little resemblance to the original. The fact that Denino's continues to attract serious food-community recognition under the same family name while operating in the same neighborhood suggests the product has held its standard across generations.

Placing Denino's Against National Pizza Benchmarks

Across the United States, the serious-pizza conversation has expanded well beyond New York. Ken's Artisan Pizza in Portland has built a national reputation on wood-fired technique. 11th Street Pizza in Miami represents the South Florida end of the craft-pizza expansion. High-end occasion dining at places like Emeril's in New Orleans, Lazy Bear in San Francisco, Alinea in Chicago, Single Thread Farm in Healdsburg, The French Laundry in Napa, and Providence in Los Angeles operate at the opposite end of the format spectrum, where structured tasting menus and intricate service are the point.

What Denino's represents in that broader national picture is an argument for the institution as a format. The OAD recognition places it alongside other cheap-eats institutions that have earned their status through consistency and community rather than through media cycles or chef-driven reinvention. That is a different kind of authority, and for many diners, a more durable one.

Planning Your Visit

Denino's is located at 524 Port Richmond Ave, Staten Island, NY 10302, and is open seven days a week from 11am to 11pm. The Staten Island Ferry connects lower Manhattan to St. George terminal, from which the #61 or #66 bus runs toward Port Richmond; total journey time from Manhattan is typically around 45 minutes. The consistency of hours across the full week makes it accessible for group visits that are difficult to schedule around more restrictive dinner-only formats.

Google reviewers rate the pizzeria at 4.6 across 2,845 reviews , a high score at a volume that filters out both outlier praise and isolated complaint. At that review count, the rating reflects a genuine cross-section of the dining public rather than a curated sample.

For broader New York planning, see our full New York City restaurants guide, our full New York City hotels guide, our full New York City bars guide, our full New York City wineries guide, and our full New York City experiences guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I order at Denino's Pizzeria & Tavern?

The tavern-style pie is the reason to come. Denino's reputation, built across more than eight decades and confirmed by consecutive Opinionated About Dining Cheap Eats recognitions, rests on its pizza rather than on an extended menu. Order the pie in a format sized for your group , the square-cut, thin-crust style is designed for sharing at the table. No specific dish data is available in our records beyond the pizza itself, but the OAD recognition and a 4.6 Google rating across nearly 3,000 reviews point clearly at the core product as the draw. For a milestone occasion, order more than you think you need: the tavern format is built for the table to share generously.